by J. R. Rain
An inhuman screaming roar rises up from the middle of the ring of cultists. It’s not coming from Marie Laveau, but from the very air in front of her. She stares in horror at the empty altar and the bloody knife. Ooh, I can only imagine her voodoo god Zonbi or whatever is not happy with vampire blood on his altar—or the tease of a stolen sacrifice.
Angela clings to me, shivering at the cold night air on her naked body. We both stare in horror as a roiling mass of black energy wells up from the altar. The vapor plumes twist together into a serpentine coil that lashes out at the priestess like a cobra strike, blasting all the flesh from her skeleton that remains upright, twitching. Sweet mama. The priestess’ eyeballs, still in the sockets of a skull coated only in blood, pivot up to stare at the out-of-control magic.
Marie Laveau’s bones begin to collapse backward; the jawbone opens, but no scream comes forth.
Cultists wail and scatter in all directions as the mass of volatile black energy engulfs the toppling skeleton in a column of shadow. In seconds, the malevolent energy seeps back into the altar, leaving no trace the priestess had ever existed. A wail of sirens rises in the distance. Eulalie’s made good on her promise to send the police in after us. I knew they wouldn’t get here in time.
“Oh, shit,” whispers Angela. “What the fuck did I just watch? Ow. Damn, I’m stabbed. What happened? Why the hell are we up in a tree… and what happened to my clothes?”
I grasp her head in both hands and stare deep into her eyes. She doesn’t need to remember the being so close to death or getting involved with Eulalie’s crew of vampires. She’d been jealous of Wendy, and overly affected by their feeding on her. According to Eulalie, she’d been unsatisfied merely being a thrall and demanded they make her into a vampire, too… so they’d banished her. I do my best to make her forget vampires exist. “You were abducted by a group of weirdos.”
She blinks a few times. While she’s lost to the mental fog of her brain trying to process my new information and deal with the forced removal of the last few minutes, I teleport us to the ground and try to get my bearings.
Once I figure out which way to go to find Eulalie and her SUV, I pick Angela up and carry her across the muddy ground. It’s still hot and steamy, and every step releases a stink like raw sewage from the muck. At least I have boots… and my sundress.
Angela squirms and tries to get away.
“Hey…” I hold her tight. “You’re okay now. I got you. Keep pressure on that wound, okay?”
“Who stabbed me?” She stares at the blood all over us both.
“A woman.”
“Did she get you, too?”
Her showing no reaction to being stark naked is making me feel embarrassed. “One of the nutjobs did. Everything was moving so fast I didn’t get a good look at her. She came rather close to nicking me as well, but what’s all over me is your blood,” I say, cringing inside at the blatant lie. Of course, the hole that knife left in me is already gone.
“W-who are you?” Angela, shivering in fear, scans my face. We are, after all, only inches apart.
“I’m a private investigator, hired by Wendy’s parents. Heard you were missing, too, so I decided to come looking for you.”
She blinks. “I don’t remember how I got here. What happened to me?”
I pat her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I can’t answer any of that. I tracked you to this park and those nuts were about to hurt you, so I charged right in. Not my best plan. They scattered and took off… except for that one bitch with the knife.”
“Where’d she go?” Angela looks around at the creepy trees.
“Not sure. Too much chaos. Don’t worry about her. We need to get you to a hospital.”
Angela looks down at herself. “All my shit’s gone. Like why am I naked?”
“Creepy cultist sacrificial ritual 101,” I say. “The victim and all participants must be naked.”
She stares at me. “What?”
“That group that wanted to kill you gave you something. You were so high you had no idea what you were participating in.”
She shivers. “Holy shit. Why don’t I remember… like the past week?”
“Someone drugged you—with what, I don’t know—and abducted you. Whatever they gave you must have affected your memory. You’re okay now, Angela.”
“Oh. Ow, this hurts like a lot.”
I glance down at her, half-tempted to make a remark about the priestess’ knife having gone completely through me… with this girl only getting an inch or so. But, honestly, what was the point? “Yeah. Stab wounds usually do. Keep pressure on it.”
Well, I suppose going back through time had one little advantage: I’ve got a beat-to-hell sundress on. If my initial plan had worked—swooping in there as Talos and snatching her like an eagle nabbing a field mouse—neither one of us would be wearing anything. It’s awkward enough that she’s nude, but both of us… I think I’d develop a permanent blush.
Eulalie leaps out of her SUV when we get within sight. Moon Bayou behind us is awash with police lights and shouting, cops running around chasing naked cultists. Boy, I wonder what that’s going to look like on the news tomorrow.
“Mon dieu!” shouts Eulalie. “What has happened?”
I carry Angela over to the back passenger door on the right. “Remember when I said this was probably the dumbest plan I ever had?”
Eulalie blinks at me. “And I told you not to do it? I remember.”
“Yeah, well… it was a pretty damn stupid plan. But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“What?” Eulalie tilts her head. “You are making no sense.”
I set Angela on the seat and mutter, “Keep your hands pressed over that wound.”
“Samantha,” says Eulalie. “What…”
“I’ll explain.” I climb in and shut the door. “Thanks for waiting, by the way.”
She runs around the front and pulls herself into the driver’s seat, then glares at me.
“Now everything makes sense,” I say. “How people knew me, but I couldn’t remember…”
“Samantha, did something happen to you?” asks Eulalie.
“Yeah. I’ll explain later, once we get Angela to the hospital.” I glance over at her. “I just got back from Richmond.”
She starts the truck and blinks at me. “Richmond? How… you were only gone a few minutes.”
“Like I said, we’ll talk.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Eulalie drops me off back at my hotel after we’d scrounged up some clothes for Angela.
Bringing a naked, wounded young woman to a hospital might connect her back to that nonsense in the bayou, so we all decided on a simple mugging story for the authorities. Mostly to keep Angela separated from the voodoo mess.
I also made damn sure she knows she should probably get the hell out of Louisiana as fast as possible. Something horrible happened to Marie Laveau, but that doesn’t mean the other hundred or so of her followers won’t remember Angela. So, she agreed to get out of here. Then again, there was a small chance I might have prompted her to agree.
So, anyway. It’s true that the driving force behind my everything in the past couple of weeks has been getting the hell back to my kids, but now that I’m free of the tremendous weight of wondering if I will ever get home, there’s something I really want to do first.
I peel off the bloody, ancient sundress, kick off my boots, and sashay into the hotel bathroom.
“Come to mama, you hot piece of total sexiness,” I say—to the shower stall.
***
After a nice long shower, I enjoy a nicer longer soak in a bath. It feels like I’m washing the grime of a thousand years away. All the dirt under my pointed nails, the grit that seems to have found every little crevice of my skin. When I first turned on the water, I thought a spray tan rinsed off me, but it had been dirt.
Once I’m clean, dressed, and packed, I head down to the front desk to check out. And, after a nice little walk to
an inconspicuous place outside, I teleport home to an always-empty section of my closet, there just for such an occasion. With Delacroix’s ring and his magic travel bag stashed safely in my bedroom safe, I rush down the hall.
Tammy’s on the couch in the living room watching TV. “Oh, hey, Mom.”
She looks back to the screen for a second or two, then snaps her head to stare at me. “Mom! Where’d you…?” Her confusion melts away when she remembers I can teleport. “Oh. Cool. So you’re done in Louisiana?”
I rush over and pounce-hug her.
“Gah! Mom! Chill out. You’re acting like you’ve been gone for months.” Tammy blinks and reads my mind. “Whoa, you went to a Civil War thing?”
Anthony leans in from the kitchen, peanut butter on his cheeks. “Oh, hey, Mom.”
“Get over here,” I say, sniffling and raising my arm.
“Mom’s on Planet Weird again,” says Tammy.
As soon as my son sits on my other side, I squeeze both of my children tight, too choked up to talk. Anthony looks so much like those boys who ran headlong to their deaths in Manassas. To think that mere children fought and died in such a horrific conflict gets me all sorts of clingy. And Tammy does kinda resemble Lanie, in that they’re both teenage girls with pale skin. Their faces aren’t really that similar after all. Guess I’d been projecting.
Tammy gasps at the same instant I relive the emotions of realizing I almost watched a fifteen-year-old get shot in the face, if not for my offering to clean dishes. “Holy crap, Mom. You really went to the Civil War?”
Elation at having my kids close and safe pulls me out from under the cloud of sorrow. I poke her in the side. “Young lady, we’ve talked about mind reading in the house.”
She’s too stunned at what she’s seen in my head to even turn on her sarcasm machine.
“Say, um, who won the Civil War?” I ask.
“The Blue Team, duh,” said Anthony.
I breathe a sigh of relief. “The North?”
“Of course the North. And whoa,” says Anthony. “You legit went back in time or something?”
I pull them both in tight. “It’s… a long story.”
They exchange glances.
“A real long story,” I say, then laugh.
The End
Sam returns in:
Dead Moon
Samantha Moon Case Files #3
by J.R. Rain and
Matthew S. Cox
Coming soon!
~~~~~
Also available:
Moon Dance
Vampire for Hire #1
by J.R. Rain
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback * Audio
~~~~~
Finally, if you enjoyed Blood Moon, please help us spread the word by leaving a review. Thank you!
~~~~~
Return to the Table of Contents
Also available:
Silver Light
Alexis Silver #1
by J.R. Rain and
Matthew S. Cox
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
Different Paths
Comfortable can mean many things.
In the sense that I’m crouching in the weeds with a rock jabbing me in the ass, I’m not comfortable in a physical sense. On a metaphysical level, I am, but it’s taken over a century for me to get here.
Pine trees filled with the steady susurrus of insects and the chirp of birds surround me. A chorus of cheers and howls goes up from the group of nineteen-to-twentysomethings in the campground I’ve been watching for the past few hours. Despite the ratio of girls to boys basically one-to-one, the predominant activities going on so far have been drinking, pot-smoking, sleeping, and the occasional pill or three.
My camera sits against my chest on a strap, half-hidden behind my long, black hair. Normally, I prefer skirts or dresses, but neither are good choices for deep woods hiking. Since my objective has turned out to be rather boring, I lose a few minutes observing a caterpillar inching across my right shoe. I’m wearing one of those ‘not-quite-a-boot-but-not-quite-a-sneaker’ hiking deals.
The one in the green shirt looks delicious, says Licinia, her voice in my mind still tinted with a Latin accent. Not Latin as in Hispanic, Latin as in Ancient Rome. She pronounces her name like ‘Lee cheen-ia.’ Licinia Neratius took her last breath in 52 A.D. I tried coming up with a short nickname, but ‘leech’ wouldn’t work, and ‘Lee’ sounds wrong too. ‘Chinny’ made her growl. So much for nicknames.
Delicious? Do you mean that sexually or literally? I grin. The man in question is about twenty-two, short black hair and clean-shaven. He has the look of an Italian bodybuilder who’s recently decided to give up and go live the slacker lifestyle.
Licinia laughs in the back of my thoughts. Oh, either, I suppose. But I am fond of his looks. If we ate him, we couldn’t enjoy him again.
Too bad the poor guy’s taken so much of whatever he’s on that he’s tasting color. Probably LSD. The whole campsite before me is full-on 1960s chic. Their attempt is admirable if not a bit off. Some of the decorations are from the early-mid 70s. Still, points for trying to bring back hippie culture. We’re in the woods a couple miles southeast of Monroe, Washington. I figure it’s an old, abandoned campground these kids found and made their own. Aside from a mixture of barely-functioning vans and a pickup truck, they’ve got a few trailers and an RV. They even built an outhouse from plywood.
The reason for my being here sits on a green and white folding chair, his bare feet up on a tree stump while he lazily tends a tiny, rectangular grill where a colony of turkey hotdogs progresses from completely inedible to merely repulsive. Worse than the rock jabbing me in the ass, the smell of that ‘food’ is making me regret taking this job. Of course, when a panicked father shows up at my office rambling on about his missing boy, it gets my attention. Licinia’s as well.
Kyle Brennan, age nineteen, missing for two weeks. Though, to hear his father tell the story, it sounded more like a seven-year-old gone missing from his bed in the middle of the night. Overbearing dad, I get that. No wonder the kid wound up toking his brains out in the woods. I wish one of them would light up again. That smelled better than those atrocious fake hotdogs.
Licinia chuckles. After all, she, better than anyone, knows that I had long since lost my taste for conventional food. I mean, I can eat it all right, but those particular wieners don’t even rate as food.
A girl somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four is curled up beside him, her head in his lap, her straight brown hair long enough to touch the ground. I could take their photo, and someone would mistake it as a still from a documentary on the sixties. Hell, given the scenery, the photo would make a decent album cover for 60s music. Except for the smartphones a few of them have out. In fact, I do take pictures―several dozen. Mr. Brennan hired me to find his ‘missing little boy.’ I have to show him proof I did something.
Amazing how small those things have become, says Licinia. I remember the first ones filled entire rooms.
Those were computers, not phones, but I suppose the difference is minimal these days. I mentally agree with her while picking at some beef jerky unearthed from the pocket of my green Army jacket. I don’t remember the name of the man who gave the coat to me, but I do recall it had been worn by a soldier in Korea during the war. It’s in good shape as it doesn’t leave my closet often. I don’t get cold, but I’m quite pale. The jacket helps me blend into the woods.
So much for daddy’s little boy. Licinia laughs. That man was obnoxious. Talks about this kid like he’s still small enough to require someone to wipe his ass for him. No wonder the boy’s out here. He’s old enough to make his own choices.
Yeah. A hobbledehoy out of his father’s shadow.
You’re showing your age again, dear.
I roll my eyes. She’s one to talk.
A gossamer sigh slides across the back of my brain, giving me a momentary shiver. I do regret the effect my presence has
had on you.
I know. It’s all right.
At first, I hadn’t expected to care, but you’re a lot like I was. Licinia again, speaking inside my head. My Dark Mistress, as I think of her.
Dark soul sister?
I smile. Something like that. We’ve been together long enough; in fact, she’s more family than anyone else has ever been to me except my mother, but she’s long dead. People who are aware of the world beyond the understanding of society refer to Licinia’s kind as Dark Masters, but if you overlook her meddling with black magic thousands of years ago, she’s not a bad person.
Why thank you, dear. Her need to smile manifests on my face.
You know I might’ve been a little rattled early on, but I’ve come to think of you like the sister I never had. Besides. I’d have been dead otherwise.
Yes. Our combined smiles fade to a somber downcast gaze. But your soul’s path is different now. And that’s my doing.
I nod. A hawk soaring overhead catches my eye. He’s mesmerizing in his slow, effortless glide against the deep blue, cloudless sky. Crunching intrudes from the camp as the guy in the green shirt walks over to the grill and takes one of the atrocity-dogs. I can’t bear to watch him eat it, and that’s saying something.
Because of me, you’re cut off from the cycle of reincarnation. Your soul has come to reside wholly within your body, severed from the universe.
We’ve talked about this already, of course. It’s not as if I remember any of my past lives, nor would any of my future selves have any memory of my current incarnation as Alexis Silver. Why should I be upset about lives I don’t remember or future selves that won’t remember me? Becoming part of The Creator doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, right? Does any trace of my personality remain, or is it like oblivion?
I don’t know.
