by Various
Devon would be expecting me to come through the main door and maybe he had set a trap. No, I couldn’t go that way, as it might endanger Brenna even more. I regained some of my composure and calmed a little. My anger still boiled under my skin, and my muscles rippled as I changed form. Taking my human appearance, I kept the talons and sharpened maw. I backed out of the hallway and pushed open the broken front door, the tinkling sound of glass reminding me of church bells as it hit the brick sidewalk. I walked backward out of the building and surveyed the surroundings. There was an alley, but it was not on this side of the building. I raced back up Winter Street onto Tremont Street when I saw a small alley hidden next to a church. This was how I could get in. I saw the fire escape leading up the side of the building.
My claws sank into the bricks and I hurdled over the gate, allowing my wings to shape, as I was airborne. Then I flapped up along the building until I was at the fire escape of the Boston Tearoom. I landed as softly as I could, pulling my energy around me so Devon would not sense my arrival. I placed my hand on the door and pushed. Wood splintered on the other side as I broke the bar that kept it sealed.
Shit. He must have heard me. My surprise is ruined, but it doesn’t matter. I have to get to her in time.
I rammed into the door. It opened and I tumbled down the stairs, landing hard on my ass.
I got up slowly, catching the faint scent of sage. I tasted the remnants of it on my tongue as the ashes lingered in the air. This place had been cleansed recently to keep evil things out. I snickered. Little good it did. My ears perked up when I heard a faint moaning, a slight beating. I recognized the sound of that drum. It was Brenna and she was still alive, but barely. I didn’t have much time.
I moved down a narrow hallway and found Brenna and Devon in the main room where I had my reading done the week before. There, in a pool of blood, was Brenna. Devon leaned over her, still in human form. He sucked at her neck greedily, trying to lap at the little blood left in her body. I knew there wasn’t much left. The pallor of her skin reflected the candles, which burned next to a small shrine to the Virgin Mary in the corner of the room.
“Get off of her,” I growled, my vocal cords shifting to normal once again.
It took Devon a moment before he acknowledged me. He stole one last sip and then looked up at me. His eyes were black, burning red in the middle. There was no humanity left in him. He held Brenna close while wiping her blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I knew you’d come just in time,” he purred.
I took a step forward, but he stopped me as one of his talons curled around her throat.
“Tsk, tsk, Ronnie. One more step and she’ll die forever with no hope of being brought back. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see that, now would you?”
“No,” I whispered.
I looked down at Brenna and saw how fragile she was. How innocent. She wanted so much to be normal, but it just wasn’t in her to fit into a world made of stupid rules. That was why she pretended to be a vampire. She thought she could get away from the rules, but not everything is breakable. Her fate caught up to her, and she became tangled up in the web of my life, my destiny. Tears poured from my eyes as I looked at her, wanting her to be so far away from here, back in the heat and heaviness of New Orleans where she could still pretend to be whatever she wanted. My heart broke as I saw her there dying on the floor, her life now imbibed by Devon.
“You love her, don’t you?” he asked, completely baffled by the thought that I actually felt some emotion. He never truly loved me when he thought to marry me years ago. I was just another conquest. “This just gets better and better.”
“Why? Do you find it so hard to believe? Just because you don’t have a heart doesn’t mean I don’t.” I hissed.
“Oh, I could not care less about my heart. No, Ronnie, I was just saying this gets better because if I had known how much you cared for this mortal then I’d have done this ages ago just to torment you. As it is, this whole time has been wonderful. And Brenna, she’s delicious, but I’m afraid she’s dying, and I’m late for a dinner date.”
He glanced one more time at Brenna and then put her down, letting her head thump against the hardwood floor. Her skull cracked from the impact. I moved then and gathered her up in my arms as she grew colder.
“You’re going to let her die? You can’t just leave her.”
“It’s not up to me anymore. It’s your decision. You can let her die or bring her back. Either way you’ll have the guilt of her demise on your conscience for the rest of your indentured life, and then you’ll realize everything I told you was right and you’ll beg me to take you back.” He paused and fingered a few of the cards on Edmund’s table. He drew one and looked at it, smirking. Then I felt his hot breath on the back of my neck as his cold talons encircled my throat.
“Then, you’ll wish for the mercy I’d have shown you if you had come back to me willingly. All of these games try my patience. The next time I won’t be so fooled as to let you out of my sight. You’ll be starved, emaciated, your blood eating away at you before I let you feed. And then in between I’ll make sure you never have enough to heal properly. In time these pretty features will be scarred, with maggots and worms crawling inside of your skin, and not just your face and neck this time, this time inside your whole body. Oh yes, you’re not going to get away from me that easily.” He breathed in my ear and his forked tongue caressed the side of my face. I tried to pull away, but he held me in place.
“Remember, I’ll be seeing you.”
With that, he was gone. I assumed he went out the way I came in because I didn’t hear the elevator nor did I hear any doors open. He just vanished. And I knew it wasn’t over. No, everything had just begun.
I held Brenna close to me, pressing my fingers to her seeping wounds. Tears freely flowed from my eyes. For the first time in a long time they came, as I had no walls encasing anything in me. Everything I was, beast and all, cried out for the rape of this innocent, for the taking of a life. Ronnie surprised me and I even felt her sadness. Strange, because I thought she didn’t feel any kind of positive emotion. I wondered what had changed. I posed the question.
This human sees us for what we are. She has grown on me, my beast answered and then retreated. I dared not ask anything else since I doubted I would get an answer. Still it was something to ponder.
My hand hovered over Brenna’s chest as I felt for her pulse, but my hearing wasn’t wrong. With each beat her heart struggled to pump the last trickle through its arteries. Her skin grew colder, losing body temperature as she plunged into death. I swore to myself I wouldn’t bring her into the life I had led. She would not become a monster. She would not end up like me.
“Who says she’ll be a monster?” I looked up at the voice and found Edmund standing in the doorway. Through my tears I wondered how long he had been standing there. The more I looked at him, the more I realized I saw the hallway right through him. I hugged Brenna close to me as if trying to protect her from the specter, but she was already beyond my protection.
“Why do you say that?” I asked Edmund, the ghost or whatever he was. I didn’t care if he read my mind. I needed to know what was in store for Brenna.
Edmund walked into the room. I noticed the energy around him rippled as though he were coming through space and time to be here, to help. As much as I wanted to know how he did it, and what he truly was, at this point I didn’t dare ask. Brenna was slipping away.
Edmund passed his hand over Brenna, seeing when Death would claim her.
“She’s not gone, and you know she made her choice the moment she came onto this plane. If you think meeting her was an accident, you’re wrong; just as you meeting Devon, or meeting the old gypsy in the park, were not accidents. She knew when she came this was going to happen. We even discussed it when she was here. She knew something from the dark would bring her into the light.”
“I’d be condemning her to darkness. To live like I am. F
orsaken by God. Forever to be a demon.”
Edmund shook his head. “Have you ever asked her what she believes? Maybe she doesn’t believe in God the way you do. Maybe she sees the world through the eyes of one who accepts all creatures. Maybe a Goddess, even. You’ve seen this representation from the painting on the wall, of one who accepts. She sent you love the day you walked in here.” Edmund gestured toward the painting on the wall.
I followed his outstretched hand. The woman was no longer on the wall, but standing in front of me with her arms outstretched.
“It’s not possible,” I whispered.
“You’re not possible. Vampires are only in books, yet you’re here. Why can’t she be real? Why can’t a friend reach out from beyond the grave to help a person he cared about? Maybe even angels and devils are one and the same. Anything is possible. Even a condemned vampire finding the light, turning away from the darkness. Try it, and save both of you.”
With that, Edmund started to vanish.
“Wait, you’re dead. What will I tell Brenna?”
He smiled faintly. “She’ll know. Besides she’ll find arrangements have already been made. She’ll be able to keep the Tearoom running far longer than I can. Besides, she’ll have a good business partner. Take care of her for me.” With that, he was gone.
I gazed back over at the mural and the robed Goddess was back among her pillars of stone with a saddened expression on her face, as though she knew Edmund had passed on. I shuddered and then looked down at Brenna. What did she believe? Was Edmund right: was this her destiny? Did she know? I couldn’t answer those questions without being able to talk with her and to do that I had to bring her back to life. I had no choice. How could I give up the one I truly loved?
“All right little one, if it’s what you came here for, then so be it.” I repositioned her so her lips touched my neck. Praying it wasn’t too late I opened a gash in my throat. The warmth and stickiness of my blood welled up, seeping out upon her lips.
I locked my eyes with the Goddess on the wall and begged with all my might for her to send Brenna back to me. I needed her with me forever. I prayed for forgiveness for all of the sins I had committed over the years, for killing my sister and my parents. I asked for all their blood to be washed from my hands and for their ghosts to leave my house. I kept the house because I thought it was my obligation, but now I realized it was just a thing I didn’t need. It was a place of wood and brick that held old memories. My family had moved on and had already forgiven my sins. It was I who had to forgive myself. Just because I had become the thing I was didn’t mean I had to live my life in the shadow of that evil. That was what everything boiled down to: the final revelation of self, when all masks were off completely. It didn’t matter if it was a god or a goddess on a wall, as long as it was something above that forgave.
Brenna’s lips moved slowly against my neck, suckling like a newborn kitten.
My prayers had been answered. I had not lost the true thing I loved. She was going to be with me forever and always. I sighed as she began to tug on me harder. Her hand came up, encircling my waist, the other pushing against my neck to latch onto the wound more securely. She took mouthful after mouthful of what I had. I didn’t care that I grew cold, that my heart slowed down, that she was taking too much. I didn’t care because all the weight lifted off of me. I was free to fly with her beyond the mortal coil, and be with her in whatever realm she chose. Soon, I realized that to do that I had to teach her and show her the ways of our kind. I had to pry her off of me.
When I did look into her eyes, they were not black from hunger like all newborns of our kind. They were the clear, human eyes she had died with. The only things that hinted at her otherworldliness were the silver flecks dancing in her pupils like a kaleidoscope. I smiled to myself as I looked at the newborn, for a miracle had truly happened. A new vampire had been born this night, and she was like none the world had ever seen.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My name is Brenna.
I took a breath, forcing myself to inhale. Somehow I had to prove I was truly alive, that nothing had changed, but everything was different. The air in my lungs tasted funny, particles of old sage lingered in the air as they stuck to the tiny air sacs in my lungs. I distinguished between the particles of dog dander as well as the regular household dust built up in the environment. All of this by taste and smell alone.
Opening my eyes, I tried to rid my mouth of the taste of stale blood. Then something caught my attention. My heartbeat was off. It was slower than it had been before. As I thought about it, it sped up and returned to its normal rhythm. My eyes focused, taking in the light. Everything was a myriad of colors, rainbows reflected off the pictures on the wall. I scanned the room, my gaze settling on the Saturn mural on the ceiling. Suddenly the mural was in 3-D with the shooting stars grazing the other planets and the rings of Saturn actually rotating. I blinked and the mural was flat, just paint on plaster.
I looked around the rest of the room and saw the transparent figures of ghosts leaning against the walls. Most of the spirits I didn’t know. One I saw wore a leather apron and held a hammer. I surmised he was the shoemaker who once inhabited the Tearoom. He looked upon me and smiled, then walked toward the rear of the Tearoom and vanished. I thought it odd to see him, but it was the other specter sitting in Edmund’s leather office chair who made my heart stop beating as I stared at it, or him, the ghost of Edmund. He was transparent at first, but then became solid. I smiled at him and knew somehow he had saved me. He nodded, still reading my mind, and then turned in the chair, picking up his deck of cards and pulling one out. He held it up. It was the Universe, a card that showed new beginnings, that anything was possible, that there was a world beyond this that both of us had stumbled into. I nodded, understanding the implication.
I’ll be with you always, he whispered in my mind, and then he was gone.
My old friend had died, but he would be there if I needed advice or just someone to talk with. Even though I had crossed a different threshold of reality, I had not lost my psychic abilities. In fact, they had been enhanced in ways I wasn’t used to, but I could still see spirits and predict the future. Closing my eyes, I took a moment to compose my scattered emotions. Then the pain hit me.
It started in the pit of my stomach, working into my veins like molten lava burning through me, and I got the worst cramps I’d ever experienced. My thoughts, my rationality were breaking down. Something deep in the back of my mind stirred like a bat stretching its wings before taking flight into the night.
My awareness shifted, bones elongated in my hands, stretching the skin and muscle, turning my fingers into talons. My teeth grew, giving me a maw a lion would envy. My ears moved and the muscles danced in my back as something wanted to break out from under my skin. My face flattened and my jaw stretched, allowing room for all of my teeth. Pain coursed through me. I wanted to give myself over to it, to let the waiting beast into my psyche, but I heard a voice through the haze. Something I latched onto to save me. It was Veronica.
“Fight it, Brenna.”
Her voice was a light that gave me strength. The beast came out of the cave in my mind. I saw what it was we vampires truly were. Veronica was right. We were angels fallen from grace, shunned to embrace the darkness. I saw a beast with twisted horns, a maw of sharp teeth, and a furry black tail with wings of old leather. I didn’t believe in demons; I believed in acceptance and Fate. I’d chosen my destiny before I was born. Edmund knew this, just as I did. I stretched my hands out, taking a step forward until I had the demon in a lover’s embrace. Its claws ripped furrows in my back. It howled and screamed, struggling against me, but I held tighter as it thrashed, afraid of me, afraid of the emotions and the purity of my soul. I held fast, and after a moment it looked into my eyes, knowing I would not give up, and it bowed its head in acquiescence and then shattered. The beast disappeared, going back to where it had come from. The seed planted in my soul by Devon died. Even though I a
ccepted the beast, it was still in my personality; I could control the demon. I had control over my own actions and didn’t have to listen to an alternate personality like all the other vampires. All my thoughts were my own. The space where it had been was occupied by both parts of my psyche. I had overcome my nature, while all other vampires embraced it.
My muscles stopped rippling, and my teeth returned to normal, except for my canines. My face shifted back to its original state, and my fingers and hands returned to normal. Yet, I knew I could draw my talons or the wings in my back at any time. I could even change my shape if I wanted to. The demonic blood had reshaped me, even though I didn’t answer to its call, so if I wanted I could take on the shape of the vampire. I was in control. I had the decision of who I would kill. Even as the beast had disintegrated, my hunger burned fiercer, seeping into every part of my body.
I untangled myself from Veronica’s arms, noticing how pale and lank she was. I had taken much of her blood, and she needed sustenance more than me. We both got up, but she stumbled.
“You have to feed,” I told her. My canines vibrated from the hunger pain.
“What made you the smart one all of a sudden?” she asked, trying to relax, but I saw behind the façade.
“I’m the psychic, remember?” I teased.
“Very funny. Let’s go!” Her voice grew hoarse as she let the beast into her nature. She began to walk out of the Tearoom when I grabbed her. She turned, growling at me, her eyes turning black as the hunger inked into them. I knew she hated her nature, fought against it for so many years, and just as she had given me strength she could embrace her beast as well.
“Wait.”
She took a breath. Her eyes brightened from black to midnight purple.
“What?” Her voice was garbled because her vocal chords had shifted.
I took her face in my hands, feeling the waxy texture, the coolness underneath, knowing this moment my flesh felt the same. With the same hunger rampaging its way through me, I pushed it aside to focus on her.
