Divine Fantasy

by Melanie Jackson

  “It worked.” Mostly. Seeing his sudden concern, I wasn’t going to mention the pain like no other that had rounded out my climactic moment and spoiled some of the fun.

  “Besides, I wanted you. Lust has been attacking me pretty much since we met.” His voice was still amused as he confessed. Probably because my face was still hot.

  I swatted him without looking up. “So, you were being selfish and doing what you wanted. That’s typical. Men!”

  “Partially selfish. If the beast had really done what it really wanted…” He stopped, no doubt deciding that it was wiser to keep his own counsel on this.

  “You…wanted to…what? Kill me?” I asked in a small voice. I didn’t look up. “Really? I thought earlier, out on the road….”

  “No. Eat you, maybe…and we would have done a great deal more, a great deal more violently than we did.”

  “What do you mean?” I was under the impression that he had done just about everything that was legal.

  A hand slid down over my behind and gave it a pat. I gasped as several ideas occurred to me. Lack of oxygen forced my face up to the air and I found him smiling at me. His expression had never been so relaxed. I wondered if he was teasing me but decided not to ask.

  “You perv!” I joked.

  “I fear so. You bring out my worst impulses.”

  This idea was oddly flattering. Miss Modesty wasn’t used to being the object of perverted fantasies.

  “You’re staring awfully hard at me now. I’m going to get a complex,” I said, raising a hand to my wayward hair and wondering if it was doing a Bride of Frankenstein thing.

  “You look rather different,” he answered. “I think I like the changes.”

  “I do? How do I look different? Is it my hair?” I rolled to my feet and scurried for the bathroom and the mirror there. Ambrose followed, pulling on his jeans. He was probably expecting me to freak out, though I had told him time and again that I do not get hysterical.

  I didn’t get hysterical, but it was a near thing.

  “Well.” The gods had apparently listened to my request for flawless skin. They had given it to me in spades, along with an extreme shade of pale. My eyes were also black and missing pupils. Just like Ambrose’s. Excepting that Ambrose’s eyes were mysterious, dark and dangerous, and I looked about as scary and enigmatic as a gerbil. My hair had also curled itself into a golden nimbus that wouldn’t flatten no matter how many times I shoved it down.

  “I look like a God-damned fuzzy hamster,” I said, a shade of dismay in my voice. “Look at this hair! Will it always be like this?”

  This cracked Ambrose up, making him actually double over with laughter. It was then that I realized that my lover was still more than a bit high from the storm. For that matter, I was too, though my buzz was quickly fading. I waited patiently for his hilarity to cease.

  “You don’t look like a hamster,” he finally managed to say. “Nor any kind of a rodent.” As compliments went, it left a bit to be desired. Ambrose realized this and added simply: “You’re beautiful. Now more than ever.”

  That was slightly better. I reached for the door and pulled on a robe. I wasn’t actually cold. It was just force of habit. Miss Modesty didn’t go prancing about in the nude.

  “What do we do now?” I asked, dreading what he might say. In his present mood, suggestions could be anything from an indecent and unnatural sexual proposition to a discussion about how to handle the many corpses littering the roadway. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear either.

  “Eat. Everything. I’m ravenous. Shifting always makes me hungry,” he said. And I suddenly realized that I was absolutely starving too. My little bit of hot chocolate had been consumed a long time ago.

  “We don’t need to do something with the bodies first? I mean, what if the snow plow comes around first thing this morning?” This was a token gesture to my conscience, in case it wasn’t in a deep coma and would chide me later.

  “I’ve been thinking about the bodies,” he said, herding me toward the kitchen.

  “Yes?” I didn’t ask when. Or how much.

  “There is no way to disguise that the cemetery has been disturbed.” Ambrose opened a cupboard and got down all the jars of olives. He popped open a lid, ate a handful, spilling brine on the floor and on his bare chest. “Take these,” he instructed and then went to the refrigerator and grabbed the eggs.

  “I don’t suppose there is any way to hide it,” I agreed as I fished out an olive. Nothing had ever tasted so good.

  Ambrose picked up a frying pan and then started for the living room. It took me a moment to figure out that he was going to cook in the fireplace. It was then that I realized my vision was better than before. Much better. I hadn’t even noticed that we were wandering around in the dark.

  “Whoa. This is great. I can see everything,” I muttered.

  “So why don’t we haul the bodies back there?” Ambrose went on. “I’ll still burn them, just to be safe, but at least they’ll be where they belong and no one will ask about what they were doing in the road.”

  “They’ll be looking for vandals and not zombies,” I said, fishing out another olive. It tasted sooooo good. I almost moaned.

  “And probably not until spring if I arrange another snowfall. We’ll be long gone by then.” Ambrose was being deliberately callous and I appreciated it. If he acted sensitively I might feel that I had to cry or something, and that would be dumb, because my parents turning into zombies and trying to eat me was a situation way beyond tears. “If we are very lucky, they might blame it all on the freak lightning storm. If I were the local sheriff, that’s what I’d do. To say anything else would be to invite in the tabloids, and the locals would hate that.”

  Just then a knock fell on the back door. Ambrose and I froze and looked at one another.

  “I didn’t hear anyone coming,” Ambrose said.

  “Zombies don’t knock,” I replied. “Could it be…?”

  Putting down the olives and the frying pan on the hearth, we walked back toward the kitchen. Standing in plain view of the narrow side window that framed the door were a tall man and a petite woman. Actually, they were more than a man and woman. The man radiated some kind of otherworldly power that I could feel even from across the room, and the woman was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, with hair the red-gold that autumn leaves blaze right before their death. Both had the familiar jet-black eyes that had looked back at me from the bathroom mirror only moments ago, though neither looked remotely like a gerbil.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. I recognize her,” Ambrose said softly, and opened the door. His tone was one of shocked wonder. “Ninon de Lenclos. Welcome—welcome. This is more than a surprise.”

  It took a moment for Ambrose’s words to sink in, but when they did, I felt my brows rise. Ninon de Lenclos? The seventeenth-century French feminist?

  “Hello, Ambrose Bierce. I assure you that the pleasure is all mine,” Ninon said. Her voice was vaguely accented, soft, the stuff of which wet dreams are made. At another time I might have been jealous of the way Ambrose stared at her; as it was, I was too stunned. “I’m sorry we’re late. The storm was violent and we didn’t dare interfere from the plane since these new machines are so full of sensitive avionics,” she apologized. “It seems we missed the party thanks to this delay. You are both well? No injuries?”

  “Not really,” I heard myself say. “But we’re having a zombie roast later if you’d like to stay. I wouldn’t mind giving it a miss myself. Two of the soon-to-be-grilled are my parents. I’m still rather angry about that.”

  Both the man and the woman looked my way. They did not appear upset at my words, just curious. Ambrose’s hand settled on my waist. I welcomed it, though of course I wasn’t that upset. I don’t get that upset. It was just the electrocution. It had affected me like a dose of Pentothal.

  “It’s shock,” Ambrose said. “Literally. She’s just risen, and we are both still a bit punch-drunk. The lingering s
torm isn’t helping, either. My IQ took a nosedive when the storm came in and hasn’t recovered yet.”

  “And I’ve been turned into a werewolf, but please don’t worry. We’re glad to see you. Hi, I’m Joyous Jones,” I said, belatedly stepping forward and offering my hand. The woman took it first and then the man. I could feel a kind of power in them. They were like Ambrose and I, but somehow slightly different.

  “And I’m Miguel Stewart. I’m…a vampire.” His touch was gentle, as though he expected me to be frightened at this announcement. I wasn’t, but that was because Ambrose was at my back and I had come to have utter faith that he would protect me. Also, I realized that I really was feeling a bit intoxicated and incapable of prolonged fear. Maybe Ambrose was right about the storm making us high. “I believe we spoke in the chat room last night.”

  “Ah,” Ambrose said. His hand stroked me. I appreciated the warmth of his touch. For some reason I was starting to feel cold inside and the beginnings of a hangover headache were forming behind my eyes. “I thought that perhaps it was Alexandre who would come. I was sure he was…one of the Dark Man’s get.”

  “He is, but we were closer,” Ninon said. “Dumas is still in the Philippines, but we were visiting New Orleans and able to get a late flight out. Alex is also death on computers. Much worse than the rest of us. Miguel is only newly changed, and the best suited among us for using modern electronics, so he contacted you on Alexandre’s behalf.”

  “I understand,” Ambrose said. “I short out everything too. It gets worse every year. I fear that someday I won’t be able to travel by plane.”

  They might have been discussing the inconvenience of seasonal allergies. I smiled politely and wondered distractedly what would happen the next time I tried to use the laptop. Or the phone. I thought that it was a good thing that I had sent in my book before I was changed. What if I had ended up erasing the damn thing?

  Suddenly self-conscious about doing chitchat in my bare feet and bed-head, I tried smoothing down my hair. Just to further embarrass me, my stomach let out a loud rumble.

  “Would you care to join us for breakfast?” I asked, tying my robe tighter. I felt more than disadvantaged standing about seminaked with wild hair while Ninon looked like she had stepped out of a safari shoot for Vogue magazine. “I’m afraid it’s just olives and scrambled eggs. I haven’t had time to grocery shop, what with the zombies and all.”

  “What kind of olives?” Miguel asked as he inhaled. “Mmm…. garlic and jalapeño. My favorite.”

  I found myself beaming at him. Yes, I had shot my zombie mother, been infected with lycanthropy and electrocuted, but we had olives and new friends, even if one or both of these was a vampire. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

  Satire, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness.

  —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

  —The last line of the last letter from Ambrose Bierce, December 26, 1913

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ambrose scrambled the eggs in butter. I insisted. Have you ever cooked eggs in a cast-iron skillet without lubrication? Ever tried cleaning up afterward?

  While he cooked, Ninon and Miguel told us what they knew of the Dark Man and Saint Germain. The good news was that the original Dark Man was dead and his son probably was as well. The bad news was that there were a number of Saint Germain clones running loose, and that one of the clones had gotten enough DNA from the Dark Man to begin cloning another of his parent. Ninon’s group had been steadily sabotaging Saint Germain’s “clinics” in the third world where he carried on his genetic experiments, but there was always a new one springing up. Though reluctant to embrace the idea, they had begun to wonder if there was some new supernatural agency at work.

  When we were done eating, which was quickly, we shared our story and I got out my vacation photos. We were all careful with the computer, and only Miguel and I touched it. Ninon and Miguel seemed to especially enjoy the photos of Saint Germain in the crocodile’s stomach. Miguel asked if I would mail him an attachment so he could use it for wallpaper on his laptop.

  Perhaps it was that Miguel had the gift of putting me at ease, or maybe my recent transformation had disabled old conversational boundaries, but I found myself talking easily about what I had seen and experienced.

  When we finished looking at the photos, Ambrose suggested that I do the dishes while he and the others took care of the bodies out in the road. A braver woman would have insisted on helping, but I simply couldn’t face seeing my parents or the sheriff again. It wasn’t just that I was suddenly thanatophobic. Truth to be told, I was worried that I would look at the corpses and feel nothing at all.

  Then I would know for sure that I really had become a monster.

  I got dressed. I didn’t have a lot of options. Zombies had taken their toll on my limited wardrobe, so I was wearing my teen jeans and a cropped sweater that was a decade out of style.

  The kitchen sink had a faucet but also an old-fashioned hand pump that worked fine when the power went out. I took my time drawing water, and when I had finished with the plates, I got out the hand-crank coffee grinder and ground up some beans. The old tin coffeepot was still in the cupboard, so I filled it with water and grounds and took it into the living room where I once again built up the fire. I thought that the others would probably want something hot to drink when they were done. Also, it kept me busy so I couldn’t think.

  This time I was listening hard and I heard them approaching the house. I was waiting by the back door with coffee boiling in the fireplace. We still had no power, but it didn’t really matter because none of us felt the cold or had trouble seeing in the dim light.

  “…still has facilities in Somalia, North Korea and Iran.” Ninon’s voice was light but I could tell she was annoyed. “Reaching them has proved difficult.”

  “So you think he’s after the lycanthropy virus now?” Miguel asked. He set a knife on the table by the door. I recognized it as the one I had driven into that sinister shadow. “Did you catch Pan’s shadow?” he asked me softly.

  “I caught someone’s,” I answered, telling the truth without thinking.

  “I believe so. He tried for you too, didn’t he?” Ambrose asked Miguel. “That was what I read about in Mexico.”

  “Yes—the bastard tried again after he found out that the female vampires can’t reproduce and are basically brain-dead besides. Since only the males can create other vampires, he needed either my father or me, and Smoking Mirror wisely did a disappearing act.”

  Smoking Mirror. I knew that name. He was supposed to be some kind of Aztec death god. This made Miguel even more of an enigma. Probably I should have been afraid, but somehow I just couldn’t manage it. We had werewolves and Frankenstein and a whole raft of zombies—what was an Aztecan god to that?

  I could suddenly smell ozone on Ambrose and knew he had been starting fires. The door opened a second time, letting in a gust of air. No one was on the other side and I told myself that it was only the wind and a latch that hadn’t closed properly. It was not a ghost that had followed him home.

  “I find it interesting that he sent a golem instead of a clone. Perhaps we have pressed him harder than we thought and he hasn’t had time to resume cloning. We need to take some time to compare notes and strategize.” Miguel shut the door firmly. I liked his voice. It didn’t make me shivery the way Ambrose’s did, but I found it almost hypnotically relaxing. That was probably useful when he was lulling prey.

  “I have another cabin in Alaska. I couldn’t take Joyous there before because of the altitude,” Ambrose was saying as he stopped to wipe his shoes on the mat by the stove. “It is deep in a valley and can only be reached by air. As the Realtor put it: It’s inaccessible from without and not to be left from within. It’s a ghastly and lonely place in winter bu
t very private. And none of us has to worry about being affected by the cold—unlike the zombies.” He kissed me absentmindedly as he brushed by. “We could meet up there and start working on a plan. I’ve got enough arms stashed there to hold off Armageddon.”

  “Bien. It would be best if you left here at once. Does anyone know that you’re in town?” Ninon asked. Anyone. That was code for anyone human. I noticed that she didn’t have snow on her boots, perhaps because they were stilettos.

  “No, no one knows. Except Saint Germain, I guess. There’s no sign that any of the next-door neighbors are in residence,” I answered before Ambrose could. “Anybody want coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” Miguel answered, taking a turn at politely stomping his ice-covered boots on the mat so he wouldn’t muddy the kitchen. He closed the door softly. “I know it’s all in my head, but that snow looks damned cold.”

  I glanced out the window. The sun was up, but only barely, and the snow did indeed look very cold. It was strange to think that I would never have to worry about cold or my heart again.

  “We need to turn in our rental car and get tickets.” Ambrose started for the living room. “And I’ll have to arrange for new IDs for Joyous and I.”

  “I can help with that,” Miguel said, following down the hall. “Faking IDs has become a sort of hobby. Dumas’s wife has been teaching me. Harmony is an ecoterrorist. Have you heard of The Spider?”

  “I have indeed,” Ambrose answered, clearly impressed.

  “Do we have to fly?” I asked, coming into the room behind them and pushing by. They turned and looked at me as I bent to pick up the tin coffeepot. The bottom was scorched but the coffee smelled good. I hoped the boiled grounds hadn’t made it too strong. I had never fixed it this way before, and was guessing about proportions.

  “What did you have in mind?” Ambrose asked. There was no hint of condescension in his voice. No one was treating me like the new kid on the block, even though I was.

  “We are going to leave this place, right? I’ll probably have to sell it since we can never safely stay here again.” I began pouring coffee into the tin cups. There were porcelain teacups in the cupboard, but that just wouldn’t have felt right under the circumstances.