by J. R. Rain
Roughly ten minutes outside of Chesterfield proper, I stray onto a small farm where some cows graze a good distance away from any buildings… or a chance of detection. Careful to watch my step for dung (which is easier to find if I listen for flies) I make my way across the meadow to the edge of a small wood line where the animals congregate in the shade. A bee goes by that looks big enough to carry mail.
I shudder. Wow. All the bizarre things I’ve tangled with since becoming a vampire and a giant bee still unnerves me.
An exceptionally loud wswswsws noise from some other insect deeper in the woods fills the air. Cows flick their tails at flies, a few of which come over to check me out but don’t stay long. There in the bug-infested shade of a sunbaked field, I mind-whammy a cow so it stands there and lets me drink a pint or two. Though the blood is more fulfilling when fresh, I still get the sense that Elizabeth squirms at the thought of feeding from an animal. Drinking from bottles or cups is more “refined,” or at least it allows a degree of separation from the reality of where the blood came from. To her, what I’m doing now is like a human eating cat food from a plastic dish on the floor.
With my lips pressed to a furry cow-neck, there’s no denying what I’m eating. Of course, she thinks this is beneath her. Well, you should’ve picked a girl with a flimsier mind, one she could have long-since controlled. I wonder if she really expected someone like me, once part of a hereditary line of alchemists and consistently reborn as a witch, would be weak-willed? Then again, that’s exactly why she picked me.
And we have all the time in the world, Sssamantha.
And there’s the creepy bitch we all know and love, I think, and shove her deeper into my mind. This time I imagine a vast, bottomless pit.
Yes, Elizabeth probably expected I would have been a tough nut to crack. No doubt she believes she will break me eventually.
We’ll see, I think… and cover the pit opening with a massive, mental vault.
For now, I pat the cow on the flank to calm it. Maybe I am demeaning myself by drinking cow blood, but hey…
Beef.
It’s what’s for dinner.
Chapter Nineteen
So, yeah. The cows and I have some quality time together.
I’m starting to respect them a lot more than I used to. Bees, not so much. Oh, they leave me alone all right, but it still makes my skin crawl when a weaponized insect big enough to have landing lights cruises by. The cows have also inspired me to de-stress as much as I can, which involves a combination of working smarter not harder, trying (futilely) to avoid worrying myself to death, and sitting on my ass until the sun goes down.
I can walk for hours and get hot, sweaty, and miserable—or I can fly after dark. Granted, I could fly right now if I wanted to. Talos can come out to play whenever I ask him to. But I’m also allergic to Minié balls. Not that I’m worried on an individual level about a bullet or two, but if I swoop in over a battle in progress, something tells me that both sides would suddenly forget their differences long enough to light me up. Getting shot once or twice is annoying but I’ll deal. A few thousand hitting me at once? That might actually sting. And I’m pretty sure Talos isn’t undead. That might actually kill him. And that’s not something I’m prepared to risk. Not when all it costs me is a little waiting.
Considering I’m going to need to get undressed anyway, I peel off my boots and socks to enjoy a lazy afternoon-into-evening talking to the cows while wandering barefoot around the grass. This, of course, necessitates extra vigilance insofar as animal crap goes. It’s almost impossible to actually enjoy the scenery as I leap from worrying about my kids to worrying about Delacroix to worrying about what if I never find this damn ring. The longer it takes me to track it down, the more I think Delacroix’s going to get over his bruises and take off. I can’t help but expect I’m going to get back to the Pinkhams’ house and experience another crushing disappointment.
That man is morbidly afraid of vampires. And, well, if he is an agent of the light, that makes sense. Apparently, I’m not typical of my kind. I suppose it really boils down to if his desire to have this ring back outweighs his fear of what he thinks I could potentially do to him. And despite his reassurances that time isn’t passing in the future, I can’t go five minutes without thinking of Tammy and Anthony. I mean sure, they’re not small children anymore and if something horrible happened to me, it’s not as if they’d be helpless. Mary Lou will look after them, but she’s not equipped to handle the sort of next-level bullshit that life’s been throwing our way these days.
I can just picture the look on her husband’s face if, say, a werewolf howled outside their front door. That might even get him to peel his eyes away from football. Not that Rick’s that kind of man. He’s a great husband and father, but he likes his football. Of course, one of those howling horrors walks into their house, I can just see him saying, “Nah, screw that,” getting in the car, and driving until the tank runs out of gas.
Great husband and father… yeah, I once believed I’d found one of those, too. I thought Danny loved me. And maybe that was the real problem all along. He loved me too much to handle what happened. The man never could get over that whole death thing. In his mind, “Samantha Moon” died that night in Hillcrest Park, and something else jumped into her skin. I guess I can somewhat understand how he treated me the way he did these past few years since he no longer thought I was the woman he married, but some kind of impostor that only looked like her.
That still doesn’t mean I forgive him. Okay, maybe I do a little since he’s dead.
Naw, screw it. Still pissed.
Three cows, including the one oblivious to my having fed from her earlier, stick their noses close when I start crying over everything that happened with Danny. Geez. I brush my hand over the muzzle of the cow I drank from. “Go ahead and make me feel guilty why don’t you?” It’s like she senses my mood and wants to cheer me up.
I almost feel guilty for having fed on her. Well, at least I’m uniquely equipped to ‘eat beef’ without killing her.
I’m such a sap. Something, I knew, Elizabeth would have agreed on if she wasn’t presently locked away in my mind.
Not long before sundown, a man and a boy emerge from the distant house and start heading my way. Well, not my way exactly. I’m sure they’re interested in bringing their cows to a barn or something. I slip into the woods to avoid an awkward conversation. I don’t expect they’d worry too much about a single woman trying to steal their livestock or doing anything unusual to them. But I also don’t feel like dealing with the inevitable invitation to come inside and have dinner once the obligatory conversation happens around their inquiry at what I’m doing all alone out here.
Yes, I could influence them not to invite me. I could also influence them to forget they’d ever seen me. And I would, if I had to. But influencing means I have to dip into their minds. Dipping into minds isn’t always a pleasant affair, trust me. I see things I can’t unsee. Secrets that should remain secrets. Plus, it’s getting old influencing, like, everyone I see lately.
Not to mention I don’t even have the energy to come up with a reasonable excuse this time. No, I’m feeling too close to getting home to think about anything besides getting that ring. And yeah, I know I’m “so close but so far away” and all. With my luck, Corporal Cokely is probably going to be dead, face down in the dirt somewhere I won’t be able to recognize from the air. Maybe some medic or someone tasked with picking the dead is going to have taken that ring and I literally will spend the next hundred years trying to find it.
Ugh.
Once I walk a safe-enough distance into the forest so I can no longer see any sign of civilization in any direction, I remove my dress and bundle it together with my boots. Standing in the woods naked reminds me of being a kid again. We lived like hippies back then. Well, not so much me. I grew out of the whole nature girl thing around ten or eleven. Mary Lou never ran around bare-assed that I can recall. If she did, it happened
before I was born, since she was six years older than me. My brothers on the other hand… especially Clayton. He hated clothes. The boy would lounge around the house all day in nothing but his skin, even if company came over. He even tried to go to school like that once, but fortunately, Mom and Dad put their feet down. Their bare feet, I might add. Honestly, I think they were more worried about a visit from CPS than anything else, but whatever. That was my childhood. It had been pure in a way I don’t think society is even capable of anymore. We didn’t have Nintendo games or smartphones. Just us and nature, and the occasional afternoon setting off fireworks.
I sigh down at myself. Undeath helped me get rid of a few extra ‘mom pounds,’ so my body is pretty damn close to how I looked in my younger twenties, although I still have natural curves. It’s pretty frightening to think how dangerous a vampire could be if they fully gave in to their Dark Master. I start to wonder if that means the person they had been disappears entirely, or somehow still exists at that point, but stop myself. The last thing I need is to have Elizabeth trying to make bargains with me. At the very least, I might find myself in that very same pit I’d recently banished her into.
In the darkness of my closed eyes, I focus on the distant flame. It appears as a tiny pinpoint of orange light dancing deep within the void. At my behest, it draws closer, growing from a speck to a brilliant fluttering wisp of fire.
Talos emerges into the world on a wave of energy that makes me feel like I could wipe out the entire Confederate Army myself. I ride the charge into the skies after snatching up my clothes in one clawed foot, and steer generally northward. With the cover of the night above me, I climb high enough to see miles in every direction. Aside from the soft whisper of the wind and the leathery flutter of my wings, the world is silent.
From this altitude, it doesn’t take me long to spot a large group of people in the distance. Much to my dismay, however, they don’t look to be preparing to set up a camp but rather about to engage in a bit of night fighting. Great. Hopefully, the chaos will work in my favor.
I lean into my stride so to speak, flapping in great soaring down-strokes to gain speed. As best I can estimate, the group of Confederates is around twenty miles away give or take a few either way. They’d likely been walking since sunrise. That it’s going to take me maybe ten to fifteen minutes to cover the same ground in the air makes me feel less wasteful for sitting around all day long. While I can’t recognize any individuals this far away, or even perceive an individual apart from the mass of bodies, a small army does tend to stand out—especially when they’re carrying a few lanterns.
That either means they’re not expecting enemy contact or they’re idiots.
However, the way they’re forming up suggests they are preparing for a fight. The lanterns hover at the back of the ranks. I can’t really tell who or what would be carrying lamps around at night during a battle, other than someone desperate to be shot. That could mean that the Confederates think they’re up against a much smaller force and have zero chance of losing.
Or, maybe they’re just morons.
As I draw nearer, dark shapes farther ahead become distinct from the terrain of grass and sparse trees. Due to distance, it still looks like I’m comparing two ant colonies rather than groups of people, but the Confederate side is easily five times that of the other group. I fly harder, adding a slight dive for additional speed. When I’m within a mile, they start trading shots. In the dark, the engagement happens at close range, between men taking cover behind trees, fallen logs, and whatever ditches they can find. Gunfire is far from rapid, so I suspect most of the soldiers are trying to hold as still as possible and wait for motion to shoot at. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget how dark the 1862 night is to normal people. To me, it’s dim, but I can still see easily for great distances. Were I mortal, I probably couldn’t see a man five feet away.
This works to my advantage, as it lets me swoop in about fifty feet off the ground, circling over the Confederate position. My eyes are sharp enough to recognize faces from this height, so I keep gliding back and forth hunting for Cokely. As I drift closer to the Union soldiers they’re clashing with, it becomes quite obvious why the gunfire is so sluggish: most of the Union guys aren’t even armed.
Huh?
Curious, I head closer to them, and within a minute or two of looking them over, recognize at least three of the men I helped escape from the barn/jail days ago. Shit. This whole battle wouldn’t be happening if I hadn’t let them out. Battle… yeah, right. This is an execution. I gotta do something about this… but what?
Grumbling, I pull left into a hard turn, heading back for the Confederate side.
Within seconds of doing so, I happen to stare straight at Corporal Cokely. Score! He’s about two-thirds the way to the right along their front line, at the edge of a thick patch of trees, down on one knee with his rifle aimed.
Perfect.
I dive at him. He looks up—likely hearing the leathery flutter—about half a second before I crash into him. Talos doesn’t really have hands per se, but the bend along the leading edge of the wings kinda-sorta still works. My thumbs become stubby claw-like things that jut up from the bend. The leading edge from the bend to the tip is basically my index finger, with the smaller spars in the membrane equivalent to the rest of the fingers. In essence, I can think of these wings as enormous hands with membrane stretched between the digits.
Of course, they’re shit for grasping and holding, but considering I’m crash-diving on top of him, it’s enough to keep me riding him like a human bobsled as we slide through the underbrush. I release Talos back to his own world a few seconds before we come to a stop, yours truly perched rather nakedly atop a quite stunned Corporal Cokely.
He blinks up at me and his gaze shifts to my chest.
“Why, Corporal Cokely, I do declare!” I gasp in my best attempt to overact a startled Southern belle.
“I…”
Before he can yell or say much of anything, I stare into his eyes and mesmerize him. Yes, just like Dracula from the movies, who, by the way, looked nothing like the real deal.
“Miss Moon,” says a familiar voice from nearby. “Oh, my.”
Startled, I look up as the ghost of George Clarke turns his back on me.
“You’ve nothing on!” says George.
“Side effect of switching forms,” I mutter.
“Have you no shame?” he asks.
“I left my shame back in California,” I say, and grab Cokely’s right hand. My heart nearly explodes with joy at the sight of Delacroix’s ring. “Finally! Some good luck.”
“This skirmish should not be happening,” yells George. “Those Yanks shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, I know,” I say while wrenching the ring off a slightly-too-large-for-it finger. Come on, dammit. Don’t make me have to take the finger off.
George risks a look at me for only a second before shying away.
“Good grief. Am I that horrible to look at?” I snap. “You’re shying away like I’m Lilith herself or something.”
“What are you doing to that man?” asks George.
“Taking this ring back. That’s all.”
Finally, it pops loose. I liberate a strip of fabric from his shirt and tie it through to make a pendant. The ring’s a bit too large for a woman’s finger and the last thing I’m about to do now is drop it. And it’s definitely too small to fit over one of Talos’ talons.
“Are you planning to just let this happen?” asks George, gesturing back at the intermittent popping of gunfire.
“Coke?” yells a man from behind me. “Corp’ral Cokely?!”
I’m momentarily tempted to nip a little blood from the corporal purely so I can claim to be drinking Coke during the Civil War. But, that whole Elizabeth getting more powerful thing stops me. Anyway, Cokely mumbles incoherently as my mental influence begins to weaken. His hand flops on my left thigh. He lifts his head, clearly surprised to feel a woman’s skin, and slides his ha
nd up to my hip like a blind person trying to confirm what their senses tell them.
“Sorry, Corporal.” I lean down and stare into his eyes. “I have to insist you don’t remember this.”
Again, he gazes into nowhere.
At the hesitant approach of boots crunching twigs, I leap off the dazed man and shift back to my flying form. Wings spread, I crouch to leap into the air, but catch myself before I can leave the ground. Oops, I almost forgot my clothes. Now grasping my clothing and the pendant/ring in one taloned foot, I launch into the air not three seconds before a trio of Confederates stumble across Corporal Cokely.
“What in the Sam Hill?” asks one. “Coke, how’d you get back here?”
The corporal stares into the clouds.
“He dead?” asks the other, taking a knee. “Naw. Still breathin’.”
Chuckling to myself, I swing around in a turn toward the larger mass of the Confederate Army. The view makes me think of one of Anthony’s video games where he’s got this spaceship thing and he’s strafing bad guys on the ground with lasers. I daydream about orange energy bolts flying from my wing joints, blowing up Confederate soldiers—or at least blowing up the ground nearby and scaring them off.
Hmm. Maybe I can do something here.
The Union soldiers are mostly all still hunkered down since only like one in ten of them have weapons. I imagine they’d run if possible, but anyone who stands up is going to get shot dozens of times. So… they need a distraction.
Soldiers and sailors have one thing in common: superstition. If one man staggers back to camp with stories of some giant black dragon type thing, he’d probably get court-martialed (or whatever it is they do back in 1862) for being drunk on duty. If a whole unit sees the same bogey, it’s more than likely going to become one of those things that they talk about only with each other until they die of old age.
