by J. R. Rain
“You guys talking about me?” he asked.
“No. Mom thinks I look pretty.”
“Gross,” he said, and was about to shovel a heaping pile of eggs into his mouth when he paused and cocked his head. “Dad says you look pretty, too.” And as he said those words, he shuddered. “For the record, I think you look like a big weirdo.”
I mostly missed that last part, for which Anthony surely would have been reprimanded. Except now I was doing all I could to control myself, to keep from wringing Danny’s neck via Anthony’s neck—and realizing what a terrible, no-good, very bad situation Danny had put us all in.
Then again, I had contributed, too, hadn’t I?
Yes, my son had escaped vampirism with the help of the ruby medallion—a medallion that had successfully removed whatever dark entity had briefly inhabited him. But now, I was left to wonder: was my son’s great strength the result of his own soul having been removed from heaven? And filling him completely? Was my son now doomed to never experience that jaw-droppingly beautiful place I’d witnessed just hours earlier? Had I denied my son heaven?
I didn’t know, but I did know that I had Tammy’s full attention, who looked from me to Anthony, who seemed to be having an internal dialogue with his father, and giggling at a joke... and now, Tammy was smiling, too.
Great, I thought. They can both hear Danny, and I’m the one left out in the cold.
“Relax, Mom. Dad’s just saying that you look pretty, too, except that maybe you gained a little weight.”
Both she and Anthony giggled at that, and I wanted to throw my half-empty plate of food through the living room wall... eggs, toast, hash browns and all.
“Well, you can tell Daddy—”
“Mom...” cautioned Tammy.
“—that I’ve put on a little holiday weight.”
Which may or may not be true. My clothing was fitting a little snugly. Now that I could eat, thanks to the alchemy ring on my right hand, I’d been packing away the food. I was pretty sure I no longer had a normal digestive system—or a normal metabolism. This is where, I think, Elizabeth’s own dark persuasion fully took over: in the feeding and maintaining of the physical body, which truly craved and needed blood.
The children were already giggling at this, but they exploded when I added: “So he can just bite me.”
Anthony slapped the table, harder than he probably anticipated. All of our plates, drinks and silverware jumped an inch or two. Tammy’s milk spilled. She called him a butthead, but Anthony only laughed harder, and as he continued to laugh, I saw it, I think, for the first time:
His eyes weren’t laughing, not really. Instead, they were watching me.
Danny was watching me.
It was, I think, the first time the bastard had come through.
All the way through.
Finis
Bonus Scene 6: Danny
(Deleted from Midnight Moon)
Author’s Note: This was the hardest for me to cut because, as you will see, it involves Sam’s first conversation with Danny (well, since Danny met the wrong end of Hanner’s dagger in Moon River). Again, the scene felt overlong to me. I think, ultimately, I wanted to get to the climax in Midnight Moon, and felt this scene below delayed Sam and Allison’s big trip into another world.
***
We were about ten miles from home, in Huntington Beach, and surely far enough away from my daughter’s considerable range.
Kingsley was with her now, and she wasn’t very happy about it. To his credit, Kingsley hadn’t complained. He’d brought with him a stack of case files he needed to go through. He’d also brought over three large supreme pizzas. Knowing Kingsley, I wondered if I should bring something back for Tammy.
We were in my minivan, in the McDonald’s parking lot on Harbor and Warner. When Anthony started on his third Big Mac, I said, “You understand that your father is hiding inside you, right?”
“Duh, Mom. That’s like all we’ve been talking about for months now. But he tells me he’s been with me ever since his death.”
Anthony took another healthy bite. I waited.
He swallowed and added, “But he kept a low profile, whatever that means, although I think I know what it means.”
“It means he didn’t want to freak you out, or let a certain someone know where he was.”
“The devil.”
Danny had been right about one thing. The moment he’d made his presence known to my son, the devil and his three-headed dog had oriented on Danny—and my son—sniffing them both out, so to speak. It had, indeed, been to Danny’s benefit to lay low. Except, as they say, the cat was out of the bag now.
“Anthony—”
“Will you just call me sweetie or something? When you say my name like that I think I’m in trouble.”
He was in trouble. We were all in trouble. I nodded, gave him a weak smile, and said, “Your father did some very bad things.”
“I know, Mom. He told me.”
I felt my brow furrow. “Told you what, exactly?”
Although uncomfortable, Anthony powered through, and told me about the strip club, and the way his father had treated the women there, and the way they had sold drugs, too, and had even sold some of the women. He told me that his father had confessed to being a shady attorney in his final years as well, often cheating the system, and even his own clients. Finally, his father had confessed to trying to lure me to my death, and to working long nights as a dark master in training, unbeknownst to anyone. He and Hanner had had a relationship by then, which shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. I had once considered Hanner a friend. Now, both were dead. Well, Hanner was. Her body had returned to wherever vampires go—a one-way trip to God, from my understanding. And Danny was, well, here, sitting across from me, inside our son.
As Anthony spoke, I was hearing Danny’s voice more and more. He was coming through, and I didn’t like it. I’d never let Elizabeth through—and tried like hell to keep her weak, fearing she would eventually take over me. But I knew Danny wouldn’t do that to his son; at least, I didn’t think he would. Hell, he wouldn’t dare.
“Dad says he regrets trying to hurt you, but that he doesn’t regret it either. He says he agrees with Tammy. You should have left. You should have gone far away and left us alone. But now, Daddy says he is sorry for everything, because he sees that we need you. That you were a good mommy, despite everything. He says he is sorry for everything he did to you. He says he was scared and confused, but that was no excuse. He says he deserved everything that happened to him.”
Now I heard Danny’s voice, his halting, thoughtful inflection.
Anthony went on... or was it Danny? “He says he should have been there for you. That he tried to be there for you. That it was all too much for him.”
My son’s gestures and posture had changed, too, the way he was now sitting and moving his hands. Even the way he tilted his head and looked at me.
“I’m sorry all over again, Sam,” said my son, although my son was not here, at least, not in this moment.
I took in some air, let it out, and said, “Hi, Danny.”
***
“It’s been a long time, Sam.”
My ex-husband, through my son’s eyes, stared at me unblinkingly. The parking lot light found my son’s strong cheekbones, his shockingly clear skin, the muscular roundness of his shoulders under his t-shirt. The light also caught something else in my son’s eyes: a curiosity, eagerness, excitement. I guess if I had been bottled up inside someone for, what, three or more years now, I would be eager to get out, too.
“I would never harm Anthony,” said Danny. “I never meant for him to know I was here; at least, not this early. He didn’t need to be burdened with my presence.”
“Or with the ultimate bounty hunter,” I said, referring to the devil and his three-headed dog.
Anthony stared, then smiled and nodded. Except it wasn’t his smile, nor his nod. Indeed, it was all Danny. “Same advice, Sam. It is g
ood that you do not say the dark one’s name, Sam. Saying his name alerts those who are near.”
“Those who are near?” I asked.
“The darker creatures you can’t always see. Those things that live in shadows, or in the ground, or flit through the night.”
“Demons?”
“Sometimes, yes. But not always. Mostly, it is the darker entities, those who lived unsavory lives, to say the least, who he uses as eyes and ears.”
“But I thought they would be in hell.”
“Their souls, yes. But an aspect of them sticks around. You have seen such aspects enough times. You were with me not so long ago, in the cavern. That had been a mere fragment of who I really am.”
The cavern, yes. I had found Danny sitting next to his own grave. But it hadn’t really been Danny. An aspect of him, apparently. A fleeting hint of what he was. Not his soul, but a memory. A true ghost.
“So, these aspects report back to the devil?”
“In essence, yes.”
“Why?” But the answer occurred to me as soon as I’d said it. “They are looking for leniency.”
“That, and they are bastards, through and through.”
‘Through and through’ was, of course, something Danny always said. I nearly smiled. Nearly. Instead, I shuddered. The good times with Danny had been over a decade ago. He had long since hurt me, and had long since been on my shit-list. Taking refuge in my son and putting Anthony in harm’s way had not only put him back on the aforementioned shit-list, but had moved him all the way to the top!
“Of all people, why our son?” I asked. “You could have hidden anywhere, I assume.”
There was a small delay before he answered. “Yes and no, Sam. I was a new initiate. Hanner and her crew had only just barely introduced me to the ways of the dark masters. I’d been at it for only a few months, in fact. At that point, I knew just enough to save my soul from hell; indeed, it is one of the first things we learned: to escape death and, most importantly, to escape hell as well.”
“But how?”
“They live beyond time and space, in a place unknown to even the devil himself.”
“The Void.”
“Yes, Sam,” said Danny, awe in his voice. “You know of this place?”
“I have my sources. I also understand that the dark masters were banished there.”
“In a way, yes. But it is also a place of their own choosing, their own creation. Admittedly, there have been powerful... rules set into place, rules that keep them in exile.”
“Rules set up by Light Warriors,” I said.
“Yes, Sam.”
“This doesn’t explain why you chose Anthony.”
But as I said the words, I saw him look down at Anthony’s arm, and I saw it for the first time. Maybe I had always seen it but had ignored it. Maybe I had assumed it came with the territory of being a rough-and-tumble teenage boy. But there it was, on the inside of his forearm, something reddish, and, if I looked at it hard enough, it almost seemed to pulse, too. It could have been a recent scratch, but I doubted it.
“You marked him,” I said.
“Yes, Sam. We had an agreement.”
Something cold and icy—even colder and icier than normal—gripped my heart. I watched my hands opening and closing. My skin was translucent, my veins purplish.
“One of the first lessons I learned as a dark master in training was that death is merely an inconvenience. Yes, having a physical body is always ideal, but there are ways around it.”
“Possession.”
“Yes,” he said, and I thought I might have detected the smallest hint of a hiss in his answer. “The dark masters, to put it bluntly, lost a war for mankind centuries ago. It was a war that was fought in the shadows, in decrepit castles, in deep caves and even magical realms. Sometimes these battles were fought alongside the wars of mortal men, too. Sometimes man was a pawn for these dark masters, manipulated and used. All were fought largely unbeknownst to man. Indeed, had the dark masters won the war, mankind would have been all too aware of their new overlords.”
“You do hear yourself, right?” I asked. “You sound like you stepped off the set of A Game of Thrones.”
Danny didn’t smile or outwardly acknowledge what I’d just said. He just stared at me, and swayed slightly in his seat.
“It is what I learned, Sam. But most importantly, I learned that the dark masters had created a world of their own. A safe haven. A place for their own souls to retreat and gather. Mostly, a place to escape their soul’s ultimate destination.”
“Hell,” I said.
“Yes, Sam. As you know, a belief in hell is necessary. I learned that too. But if you have just an inkling of suspicion that hell might be real, that is all the Dark One needs. Springing forth from your beliefs, a vast personal hell begins to assemble, ready and waiting upon death, stocked with demons and all sorts of nastiness.”
“And the dark masters believed in this hell?”
“They did, perhaps even more so back then.”
I’d been told that a personal hell did await those who believed they deserved such a punishment. For those who believed their final destination was heaven... their personal hell was never fully realized. Perhaps it was reapportioned to someone else. I didn’t know. Seemed kind of a waste. Anyway, for those with no such beliefs, a very different afterlife awaited. Ultimately, though, once the cloud of belief dissolved, everyone ended up in the same place. A sort of afterlife wonderland, closer to heaven than anything.
Except for the dark masters who bypassed the entire system, and fled to their own world beyond time and space, far away from the devil himself.
Danny, as a new recruit, had known just enough to flee the devil but not enough to find this mystical world. The Void.
“And what is this agreement you had with our son?” I asked.
“I grew up in the church. I grew up believing in heaven and hell. Although I rejected such teachings later in life, there was always a part of me that held out some kernel of belief, some fear, that something terrible might be waiting for me.”
“So, on the off-chance that you might die, you made a pact with your son to possess him?”
Danny stared at me and, there, he finally blinked. “I overheard something I wasn’t supposed to hear, Sam. I overheard that I was being used, and suspected something might happen to me.”
“And you stuck around?”
“I didn’t have much choice, Sam. I was in it completely.”
“But you had enough time to make a deal with our young son?”
“I did, Sam. I did, and I would do it again.”
I heard the growl rising from deep within me. A sound that surprised even me. It was, I think, a first for me. I found myself beyond speech.
“Sam, I have grown closer to our son than ever before. And he to me. Ask him yourself. Reconnecting with him these past few months have been some of the greatest moments in my life.”
“Except it’s not your life, Danny. It’s his life, which you are hijacking. What is that mark on Anthony’s forearm?”
“It was made back when we made our agreement, Sam. It was my connection to him. My way back to him, if you will. A place for my soul to disappear into, with his permission.”
“So, now what, Danny? You are going to keep staying here, hiding from the devil—”
“Sam, the name—”
“Yes, yes. He who shall not be named. Fuck you, Danny.”
Anthony blinked slowly, then again, faster. Then faster and faster, and then he shook his head. Blinked again, and my son was back.
“Mommy, no. It’s not like that. Daddy is right. I love having him with me, helping me. He’s really cool, really helpful. And really funny, too. He’s not like before, when he was never around and hardly ever talked to me.”
“Anthony, he’s using you to hide—”
“I don’t care, Mommy! He can use me all he wants. The devil can’t have him, not ever. Ever! He’s my friend. He’s
my daddy. I want him to stay safe. I want him to be my friend forever!”
Anthony made a move to yank open the door, but I reached out and wrapped my arms around him, holding him tight, keeping him in the minivan. There was no need for him to march off or run away, or do something stupid. We were not enemies. He pushed against me, trying to break free, but I held tighter and buried my face in his neck. Dammit, he still smelled like a little boy. Like sweat and dirt—and was that maple syrup I smelled? His strength was undeniable. Had he truly wanted to, I think he could have shrugged me off him. And, hell, I was in full vampire mode, the sun having set an hour or so ago. But he fought me only briefly and then sank forward and was now crying, and as he cried, I cried, too.
And as we cried together, I knew that whatever I had planned for his daddy—for Danny—had gone out the window. I needed a new plan, whatever that was. I also needed to come to terms with that fact that Danny—my worthless, cheating, once-loving hubby—might just be in our lives forever.
Yeah, I think I might have just cried a little harder.
Finis
Bonus Scene 7: Flying
(Deleted from Midnight Moon)
Author’s Note: In Midnight Moon, Sam was on her way to help Charlie Reed with his “ghost,” and this scene just seemed to throw off the pace of the story. Pace is a big deal for a novel. At least, I think it is.
***
I was flying.
With Kingsley watching my kids, I felt confident enough to drop off Anthony and head out to work. And by out, I meant up.
How did you find me, Talos? I asked. How did you even know that I existed? How did you know to come to me when I first saw the single flame in my thoughts, back when I first leaped off the hotel balcony?
I heard a rumbling chuckle deep in my thoughts. A good thing I did hear, huh?
It would have been a rough landing otherwise.
Oh, you would have been fine. Your body is surprisingly resilient; in fact, it’s growing more resilient as you progress into true immortality.
