by J. R. Rain
Well, this will come in handy. And no wonder Pardoe and Chisholm left the bag behind… they saw twenty tiny pockets with nothing but lint in them.
And no wonder Delacroix’s spirit didn’t hang around, either.
He was off exploring new worlds.
***
Once it gets dark, I again strip to my birthday suit. Only this time, I pack my stuff in the bag, not bothering to use any of the magical pouches as the normal interior has plenty of room.
Out of curiosity, I again try putting Delacroix’s ring on my thumb. This time, I don’t ignite. So, yeah. Wearing that ring cancels the effect of any other magic working on me. At least magic that didn’t require a vast amount of power to invoke. For now, I leave it dangling on the scrap around my neck and call Talos across worlds. Sometimes, I wonder what he does with my body while I’m borrowing his. It’s not like humans really have much to offer a dragon. We can’t fly. We’re not particularly strong or tough. I can’t imagine we even look all that attractive to reptiles, except maybe as a snack.
I snag the pack in my talon and flap as straight vertical as possible, heading up about two hundred or so feet off the ground into the concealment of a newly dark sky. There’s still a haze of reddish-orange across the western horizon, which comes in rather handy as a navigation aid. Richmond is still in sight behind me and a little off to the north. As I understand, Roanoke is almost due west of it about 160 or so miles. Since I don’t have a smartphone or integrated GPS, I’ll have to trust my senses to keep me going in as straight a line as possible.
My need to get home as fast as possible conflicts with my need to get home at all. I don’t want to zip around in circles all damn night, so I fly at a brisk but not reckless speed, keeping a decent amount of attention on the ground to track landmarks. Way off to my right, the cook fires of a military camp dot the landscape. Some part of me feels guilty that I’m not doing more to stop this conflict; then again, I shouldn’t be here at all. It’s so bizarre to see the land below me in an age before electricity. Everything is so dark, and it makes the stars seem brighter. The air smells much fresher (except when I fly over farms and get a nose full of cow crap). It’s almost tragic what we’ve done to the planet in a century and a half. But, yeah, that whole modern medicine thing—that’s hard to give up.
After about two hours of silent flight, I spot a large-ish city and head for it.
From the air, it’s reasonably easy to find an area of hills a few miles southwest from the city that look promising to house caves. Of course, I’m not expecting to see giant glowing blue lines on the ground. If they worked that way, I’d surely have encountered a ley line or two back home. Assuming, of course, vampires can see them. I can’t imagine they’re much different than ghosts, but… since I’ve never seen a ley line and I have seen ghosts…
I do, however, catch a flicker of blue light. It’s not a line, though, it appears to be George Clarke jumping up and down while waving at me. He recoils as I dive in close, having a fairly typical reaction for a sixteen-year-old boy to the sight of Talos. Since I don’t immediately want to cry over his death again, I think I might have found peace with his fate. After all, I know for a fact there’s a cycle now. My son “learned everything he needed to learn” far too young and was ready to go back into the mixer so to speak. Only, I wasn’t having it. I didn’t really understand the cycle then, and even if I did, I still would’ve done the same thing.
No one, not even God, is going to take my son away from me. At least, not when he’s only a little boy. Sure, being immortal, I know I’m going to be there to watch my children die at some point—hopefully when they’re both elderly. It’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done or will do, but knowing they’ve had a full life might let me keep going. Maybe once that day comes, I’ll search the world looking for their reincarnated souls. Or would that be fair to Tammy and Anthony? And to their new mother? Me, a relic from a previous life forcing myself into their new existence for my own desires.
Ugh. I don’t need to think about this now. I need to get home to them.
George forces himself to look at me as I land in front of him. “Miss Moon, that is a truly frightening aspect of your personality.”
I shrug, flapping an arm at my face in hopes he understands I can’t speak in this form.
“I know what you are looking for here, and it is close. We can walk if you fancy.”
Great. I close my eyes and offer my thanks to Talos for his kindness in helping me once again. The sense of him bowing his head in acknowledgment comes back, and soon, the warm Virginia wind brushes across my bare chest.
“As long as I live I will never… well, I suppose that’s out the window. The living part, that is.” George smiles. “Still, never am goin’ ta get used to a woman so brazen while I live or die.”
I squat over the pack and open it. “It’s only brazen when it’s done for no reason other than showing off. I’d rather not ruin the only things I have to wear. If a lady found herself in the bath when the house caught fire, would she stand around dressing or get out?”
George averts his eyes as I pull on my clothes. “Depends on the lady, Miss Moon. I’ve met a few who’d rather burn first.” He chuckles.
“What, there’s a lady present?” I feign looking around.
He snickers, opens his mouth, and shuts it without comment, an awkward expression on his face.
“You were going to say you’d seen a few you’d hope would choose to burn, since some people are better off never being seen au naturel. I get it.”
“Au naturel?”
“Naked.”
If ghosts could blush, I’m sure he’d be beet red. As it is, he looks away. “I don’t engage in such talk, ma’am.”
I laugh. “Look, I spent years working around cops and federal agents. I’m no stranger to ‘locker room talk.’”
“Beg your pardon, ma’am. Locker room?”
I chuckle while shaking out the dress so it falls around my legs. “Something from the future, forget I said that.”
George turns to look at me again once I’m ‘decent.’ “I am afraid these strange things you speak of are unknown to me.”
“You’ll find out eventually. Two, maybe three, maybe four lives from now. So, which way should we go?”
George nods off to the left, then starts walking. “More lives?”
“I’ve come to learn that souls keep going around and around. Mine came from a long line of witches, believe it or not.”
He looks me up and down. “That doesn’t shock me, ma’am.”
Again, I laugh. While following my ghostly friend through the foothills, I explain how he’s likely to be reborn, live a life, die again, be reborn, and so on, until his soul has learned whatever lessons it’s fated to learn before merging once more with the Creator.
“What about you, Miss Moon? How long are you going to live as a vampire?”
“Until the end, I’m afraid. I got kicked off the merry-go-round, so to speak.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It really is hard to mourn past lives I don’t remember and future lives who won’t remember me. Or wouldn’t have remembered me, since they won’t happen now. And when I cease to be, no trace of me will be around to feel sad about that. Or even realize I no longer exist. Nothing worth getting maudlin about while I’m still here.”
“You sound a lot like my father,” says George. “He says stuff like that all the time. Like ‘the dang thing already broke, gettin’ riled up over won’t do a dang thing.’”
“He sounds like a wise man. Even with all the dangs.”
I wink and George grins.
A few minutes later, my ghostly guide points at a cave mouth and heads inside. I follow. The tunnel winds back and forth for a couple hundred feet. The unusual roundness of the walls suggests it may have carried water at one time.
“Pa thought I was foolish for joining up to fight. I reckon he was right. But not because I wound up dead.
”
I tilt my head. “No?”
“Naw. Now I see it’s just a whole bunch o’ boys like me. Poor and little ta their name all fightin’ o’er what a handful of wealthy landholders wanna do.”
“Sorry, George. I hate to say it, but the same crap is still happening where I’m from. Only it gets worse as the weapons get bigger and crueler.” The deeper I go in the cave, the stronger a sense builds of an electric-like charge in the air. “I can feel something,” I say. “Energy.”
“You see ’em now, don’t ya?” asks George.
It occurs to me that he looks almost solid, but still luminous. “No. But you’re brighter. More real looking.”
George glances down at himself. “Huh, fancy that. I can see this light on the ground, under yer feet. Like we’re both walkin’ on a road made out of the moon.”
“Heh. Moon walking on the moon. Kind of ironic. No, I don’t see any light except for you.”
“Well, come on this way then. Looks like a bunch of ’em cross up there in that yonder chamber.”
“Five?” I ask.
“You can see ’em?”
I shake my head. “No, but I was told to find the place where five of them intersected.”
“Inter-what-ed?”
“Umm. Crossed.”
“Oh. Why dun’ ya just say ‘crossed’ then?” George blinks at me.
“Sorry.”
“Fancy future word, huh?”
“Something like that.”
George leads me into a spot that couldn’t have been much more obvious to what I’m looking for. Five similar cave tunnels, all smoothed by the passage of ancient water, continue out from the walls of a chamber about thirty feet across. Though I can’t see any visual sign of ley lines, it’s easy to picture them extending out from these caves to intersect right in the middle of this dome-shaped room. I wonder if these ley lines guided the ancient rivers that formed this catacomb, or if the water came first and concentrated the magical energy to make the ley lines.
“Well, this is the place,” says George. “How’s it fixin’ ta get you back where ya need ta be?”
“That’s the part I still need to figure out.”
I kneel at the point where the lines I’ve imagined all come together. While I still can’t see anything, there is such a potent charge in the air that I feel like I’ve chugged six pots of coffee and have both hands on a Van de Graaff machine.
“Miss Moon. That ring.” George points.
“Which?” I peer down at my hands, but it’s not them… Delacroix’s ring is glowing blue. “Wow. Never saw anything like this before.”
“It’s pretty like….” He smiles. “Well, like you.”
“Aww, George. I’m old enough to be your mother.”
He stares. “Naw, shucks. I can’t believe that.”
“Right, so…” I pull Delacroix’s journal out, but it doesn’t say anything about a ritual or how to ‘activate’ the ring. “Maybe it is as simple as putting it on.”
George shrugs.
“Well, George. Thank you for all your help. If this works, I might not have the time to say anything more, so I’m doing it now. Whatever happens for you in the future, I hope your next life makes up for this one getting cut short.”
He tips his cap at me. “You did a wounded boy a great kindness. If there’s any justice in this world, I’ll ’member ya. If’n what you said’s true an’ all about goin’ ’round in circles, God willin’ I have any daughters, may I ’member you enough ta name one Samantha.”
“That’s so sweet.” I reach out to take his hand, but get only a grip of static electricity prickles. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do any more to save your life here.”
“Well, you said we all learn what we need to learn then go back for the next round. Guess I dun figgered it out, but I wish I knew what ‘it’ was.”
I chuckle. “Don’t we all. Well. Farewell, George. I need to go home. Thank you again for all your help.”
He nods.
I hold a breath, wish like hell to go home, and jam my thumb into the negation ring.
…and nothing happens.
“Is it workin’?” asks George.
“No.”
You need to activate the ring, Sssamantha, whispers Elizabeth. The magic imbued in it has both passive and active effectsss.
“Great. So how do I activate it?” I ask.
“No idea, ma’am,” says George.
“I’m talking to my inner… umm… visitor,” I mutter.
It is a sssmall incantation. I would be pleasssed to recccite it for you. A little control, enough to speak.
“Or I could just wait 150 years and stop myself from going out jogging that night. Do you want to roll those dice?”
A reptilian sigh slides across the back of my mind. Clutch the ring in your right hand. Hold it out in front of you over the nexus.
That sounds harmless enough, so I do.
Focusss your will into the ring that it worksss, and chant: Alba wabatu sawf taftah. Saharun sawf yakun.
She repeats the words again, slower, over-pronouncing them.
For some reason, I think this is going to work. I sling the bag over my shoulder, nod once at George, and hold the ring out once more.
“Alba wabatu sawf taftah. Saharun sawf yakun.”
A flash of white energy blasts off the ring and hits me in the chest with a near-deafening roar and electrical buzz. It feels as if my body plunges into a swimming pool full of energy. Seconds after the flash, a force that’s soft and crushing at the same time slams into me from in front, like I got hit by a nerf bus. I spin head over ass-backward and start to fall…
Chapter Twenty-three
With a tremendous whump, the brilliant glare fades, leaving me seeing only darkness.
The silence soon gives way to a throng of chanting. Cold wind flutters the dress between my shins and whips my hair to the side. For a second that feels like a minute, I hang in midair directly over the voodoo ritual that shot me back in time. I’m once again over Bayou St. John, staring down at Angela Jenkins, her pale, naked body laid out on a sacrificial altar. Hundreds of cultists, every last one of them nude, surround us, chanting to their god Zonbi… or something like that. Another pair of men beat out a rhythm on large drums.
Near the altar in an enormous cage, an immense serpent sways side to side, its gaze locked on Angela as she cries out, “Papa, take me! Papa!”
Marie Laveau is the only one here (other than me) wearing anything at all, a simple white shift and gold bangles on her wrists and ankles.
I’ve appeared a few seconds before I left. A shadow moves above me—Talos, rather prior-me swooping in, exactly as I did before I was sent into the past.
Helpless to do anything but fall, I drop some twenty-odd feet and land flat on my chest in a smallish clearing between the ring of cultists and the altar. Oof. At least the grass is soft… and my bones are a little tougher than a mortal’s. Being flat on the ground is not a great tactical position, so I spring upright.
“Canga bafie te!” Marie Laveau shrieks at me, waving the knife like a wand. “Bomba hen hen! You not welcome here, creature of the night! Go, before Papa Limba come to take you away with him!”
“No!” shouts Talos-me from the air.
Marie Laveau looks upward, bewildered.
Talos-me flies down closer, slashing at the voodoo queen. Great flapping wings beat up a storm, making the nearest cultists flinch. Lightning cracks the sky, and the crowd around us—most of them fallen into a trancelike state—snap out of their haze, becoming aware of my presence. The dancers on either side of Laveau howl and reach up as if to grab Talos-me and drag it/her to the ground.
A loud clap of thunder seems to galvanize the crowd, and the big drum starts up again.
Queen Marie, still sparring with Talos-me, chants, “Papa Limba! Papa Limba! Envoyer—”
Oh hell no. Not again! I dive across Angela and punch the bitch square in the nose.
&n
bsp; The instant my knuckles make contact, Talos-me disappears.
Angela’s eyes flick open all of a sudden, wide as Moon Pies as she screams, “Papa take me! Pa-paaa!”
Marie Laveau charges back and shoves me aside with surprising strength, sending me sliding over the wet grass on my back, my legs in the air. While Angela keeps begging for her papa, Laveau raises the blade over her. Angela, amazingly, grins like she cannot wait to die.
“No!” I shout. I’m surrounded on all sides by her devotees and have a mere second to react, so I do the only thing that comes to mind: I teleport on top of Angela.
The knife rams down into my back, deflecting off my spine and going all the way through me. It probably still pierces an inch or so into Angela, but the wound isn’t fatal. The young woman under me wails in ecstasy at the pain.
Before Marie Laveau can process what just happened, I clamp on to Angela, call the single flame, and teleport the pair of us onto a lower branch of one of the giant trees directly in front of me, a couple hundred feet away. We’re far enough away that the cultists should have no damn idea where we went. And, as far as I can tell, I hadn’t teleported us into a wayward branch, which would have hurt like hell.
“Papa, no!” shouts Angela, struggling to get away from me.
Shit. If she keeps shouting, they’ll find us. I clamp a hand over her mouth. Grr. It’s kinda difficult holding on to a naked, bloody young woman revved up on something that makes her stronger than she ought to be. This girl has got to be possessed. How am I going to—
Wait…
I grab her hand and transfer Delacroix’s ring onto her thumb. The instant it’s on her, the milky glaze in her eyes disappears and she stares at me with an expression of complete confusion. Once I’m sure that whatever charm had been affecting her is gone, I pull the ring off her.
