Blessed Curse

by Sandra R Neeley

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to consider it,” Solange answered.

  “What is to consider? Vampirism needs to be stamped out,” Jude said with conviction. “You could be a part of ending the ‘other’ that hunts humankind. You could be a part of that noble end!”

  Solange lifted her chin and adopted the stance and posture she’d seen Marceline use when looking down her nose at someone. “Part of the reason you were aware my mother died, and I was born, is because we are ‘other’ as you say. We are not bad. We are just a family, with a few extra gifts. Not all ‘other’ is bad. I’m not sure I want to be associated with an organization who decides that just because something is different, it’s bad.”

  “I’m very sorry if you’ve misinterpreted what I’ve been trying to say. I don’t in any way think you or your family are bad. We’ve been aware of the LaCelle Coven for centuries as are most organizations who are aware there is more to life than simply humankind. You only came to our attention because of the circumstances surrounding your mother’s disappearance, your birth and then her death. We’d tracked the vampire Alastair to New Orleans, and shortly after your mother went missing. All evidence pointed to Alastair being responsible for her demise. The level of focus we placed on you was to determine that you were not a cold-blooded killer like Alastair.”

  “And once I was proved to be no more than myself, just a girl with certain skills, you watched still,” Solange accused.

  Jude smiled at Solange. “You have never been just a girl, Solange. You are so much more, and have the opportunity to excel even further.”

  Marceline, proud of Solange’s defense of her family, and assured that Solange could handle herself and see their visitors off, inclined her head and took her leave. “I’ll say my good nights now. Safe travels home,” Marceline said before leaving them standing just outside their front door, not even waiting for their responses.

  Solange remained where she was. The front door was open with Gillian and Jude standing in their courtyard, having just stepped outside the front door. They were facing Solange where she stood just inside the door, watching them, with the expansive staircase behind her.

  “Think about it, Solange. That’s all I ask,” Gillian said. “Here’s my card,” Gillian said, taking a card out of the pocket it was tucked into on the outside of her purse, “call me at any time, day or night. I’d be honored to have you join my cell. You don’t have to work with a partner. In fact, most don’t, preferring to work alone. But we’d always have backup available to you if you desired it. I’m centered here, in New Orleans, right over on Baronne Street.”

  Solange accepted the card. After reading it over quickly, she raised her eyes to Jude. “And you? You work out of this location, too? Is it headquarters?”

  “No, I’m just in for a quick meeting with a prospective new agent and then back to New York,” he grinned at her, knowing she knew he referred to herself. “Our headquarters is in New York. If you prefer, you are welcome to work out of New York, or any other cell you may choose. We have them established in most major cities around the world.”

  Solange looked down at the card in her hand again. She was going after the vampire Alastair. There was never any question of that. But, did she want backup in case she needed it? That was the question. Along with just how closely they’d watch her. She had her own reasons for insisting on complete privacy, and not anyone on the face of this planet but herself and Grandmama needed to know those reasons.

  “I’ll think about it. If I decide that I’d like to become a part of your organization, I’ll contact you,” Solange said, looking directly at Gillian.

  Jude couldn’t just let things lie as they were. He’d obviously offended Solange, and he’d honestly not meant to. “Solange, I didn’t mean to offend you in any way. I know not all ‘others’ are bad or evil. But vampires? Their history, their actions… they are without a doubt evil. They hunt humans like they are no more than livestock. They have to be eliminated at all costs.”

  Solange just glared at him. “Thank you for coming to dinner. It was quite… informative,” she finished. Solange simply stood quietly, waiting for them to realize she was done with their visit. Finally they turned and started their walk out of the courtyard toward the street which lay a good distance beyond. Solange noticed when Jude, in his very expensive loafers and suit, made every effort to avoid the puddles collected on the flagstones as he made his way through their courtyard.

  Slowly the left side of her mouth curved into a sly smile. She raised her hand ever so slightly and flicked her fore and middle fingers into the air.

  “Oh, come on!” Jude complained, looking up at the deluge of rain that suddenly cascaded over his clothes and favorite shoes. “Can you believe this?” he asked Gillian who stood only a few feet away from him, completely dry, watching him with her mouth hanging open.

  Finally, Jude glanced at her and saw that only he was being rained on. Startled, he spun around, looking at all areas of the courtyard and its lush greenery, fresh and deep green from the weeks of rain they’d been getting, but were at the moment dry from the respite they’d been given that afternoon. Then he looked again at Gillian who was still dry, before turning back to the front door where Solange stood with a sly smile on her face, waiting for him to figure out she was the cause of his own personal rain shower.

  When his gaze met Solange’s and she unabashedly smirked at him, he dropped all signs of surprise and just raised his hands in the air, palm up while trying to focus on her as the rain coursed down his face from his personal rain cloud. “Really?” he asked calmly.

  Solange didn’t change her expression at all. But she said the only words that would allow him to know exactly why she’d decided to soak his fancy designer clothes. “My bad,” she said by way of disingenuous apology. “Should have rained on the plants.” Solange flicked her fingers again, and the rain cloud currently drenching Jude moved over to the foliage planted along the far wall.

  “I didn’t say you were bad,” Jude said irritatedly.

  Solange didn’t answer, she just lifted an eyebrow before stepping back inside her home and closing the door, leaving them to see themselves out of her family’s courtyard and off their property.

  Gillian and Jude resumed their walk toward the street, with no words spoken. Finally when Jude ventured another look toward Gillian, he couldn’t help but add to her grin with one of his own.

  “She is more powerful than we ever expected,” Gillian said, still grinning.

  “She just commanded the weather, Gillian. I never imagined such a thing was possible,” Jude said, clearly in awe.

  “Let’s hope she joins us,” Gillian said.

  “And let’s try not to piss her off if she does. It’ll cost me a fortune in dry cleaning if she keeps raining on me,” Jude said with a resigned smile of his own, clearly very impressed with Solange’s abilities.

  ~~~

  Sometime later, Solange sat at the vanity in her bedroom, examining her reflection in the mirror. She opened her mouth as widely as she could, pulling her lips tight to examine her teeth. No pointed incisors, no elongated fangs. She leaned closer and peered at her blue eyes, using her thumb and forefinger to open her eye wider. Nope, no indication she was anything other than a young woman on the verge of starting her life on her own terms.

  Solange reached behind her neck, unclasping the golden chain that held the bespelled cross and kept it securely on her person every day of her life. She felt the clasp open, and caught it in her hand, holding it up and watching it loop itself into her other palm as she carefully allowed it to fall into her opposite hand.

  Then slowly she lifted her eyes to the mirror. She was expressionless as she leaned forward and lifted her lip again. There it was, not large, but very easily seen if you knew what you were looking for, her incisors had become somewhat more pointed and slightly enlongated.

  Gradually she raised her eyes to take in the rest of her face reflected there in her van
ity mirror. Her heart shaped face, her naturally pinked, plump lips, her flawless, pale complexion, and her heavily lashed eyes, fringed with lashes that were so dark and so long that she seldom bothered to wear mascara. Even now, in the shadows of the room, they perfectly framed her beautifully almond shaped, red glowing eyes.

  Solange was so close to the mirror that her nose almost touched it. She could see herself reflected in it because she was half human, the same reason she could walk in the sunshine, eat garlic and collect crosses to the point of obsession. Had she been fully vampire, the mirror would not have cast her reflection. She looked deep into her own eyes — red since puberty. She looked deep inside herself, peering figuratively into her own heart, into her soul. She took a shaky, slow breath and spoke aloud. “I am not bad. Not all ‘others’ are bad.”

  Solange reached behind her neck, refastening the chain that held her cross. She looked at herself in the mirror again, her blue eyes once again peering back at her. She smiled and saw no evidence of the small points of her incisors. “I may not be good, and I’m certainly cursed, but I’m not evil,” she whispered.

  Chapter 7

  The sounds of whimpering and the scent of fear hit Crispin hard as he wandered the streets of London. He was barely noticed as he kept to the shadows on his nightly hunt. His senses now alert to the target of his hunt, he closed his eyes, focused on the source of the whimpers and fear. Once he was sure of their origin, he teleported to the scene he hoped wasn’t as bad as his imagination and past experiences told him it could be.

  As Crispin materialized in the darkened room, he looked around quickly to get his bearings. There were children huddled in a corner as one of his own terrorized them — no, that was wrong — this vampire was nothing like him, not anymore. This creature, this vampire that wreaked of death and decay, was evil beyond any level of the imagination. He was soulless, merciless, and brutal. And there he stood, holding an infant aloft by one leg, watching its squalling, crying, little face and its helplessly flailing arms and legs curiously.

  “Put the babe down, Alastair,” Crispin said calmly from across the room.

  Alastair glanced over his shoulder at Crispin, snarling at him like a wild animal, before returning his attention to the infant.

  “You know that even you do not hunt infants. You told me yourself, ‘What’s the sport in one who cannot fight?’. Those were your words. Do you remember, Alastair?”

  Crispin moved closer to the insane vampire carefully, intent on saving not only the baby, but all the children in this orphanage, though it would not be easy to do. Alastair had lost all sense of himself, his insanity taking him over the brink into an almost rabid state of being. The more brutal and senseless the kill, the more his inner demon was satisfied. There was little to nothing anyone could do to stop him. So, Crispin had made it his duty to track Alastair, as best as he could anyway, and try to intervene at each chance that presented itself. True, Alastair like all vampires needed to feed. But it was not necessary to decimate entire villages, entire families, even one person for that matter in order to sustain oneself. One could feed without causing death, but for the time being, until Crispin could find a way to contain Alastair, he’d accept one death at Alastair’s hands instead of many senseless kills just for the sake of killing, that had become Alastair’s preference.

  “Leave me,” Alastair croaked, low and deadly as he brought the infant closer to himself.

  “Have you truly fallen so low that you would rather bleed defenseless babes than those who make the hunt itself truly exhilarating?” Crispin asked haughtily.

  “Perhaps I’ll hunt you,” Alastair threatened slowly, calculatedly.

  “You know you cannot. Look at me, Alastair. Do you not know me?” Crispin asked, holding his hands out from his sides for Alastair’s perusal.

  Alastair dropped his hands to his sides, the infant still dangling from Alastair's grip on one of his small ankles. Alastair looked at Crispin, his brow furrowing. He didn’t want to admit he didn’t know this vampire, because apparently the vampire knew him. The male seemed familiar, but still, he wasn’t quite sure…

  “You should know me. You created me. Long, long ago. You made me what I am. Do you not remember?” Crispin pressed.

  Visions of a young man, in the throes of passion, his lover beneath him, both totally oblivious to the threat that watched them silently in the very same room began to fill Alastair’s head.

  “I’m Crispin. Remember? You attacked and I fought you. Near death, I fought you still. Then you said you were bored with the fools you were forced to suffer eternity with, so you made me like you. You said I would make eternity interesting at the very least.”

  “Crispin,” Alastair mumbled, his fractured mind trying to put the pieces together. Then he smiled. “I killed your female,” he finally said, reveling in that fact.

  “She wasn’t my female, but you did kill her. Right after you forced me to feed from her to complete the change you put upon me.”

  “I gifted you the change!” Alastair screamed, his filthy, greasy hair rustling with his movements, spittle flying from his dirty, bloodstained face.

  “Did you? Well, then doesn’t that make you my benefactor? Perhaps my gracious benefactor would care to gift me the babe you hold, then together we can go out and feast on the night,” Crispin invited. “Prove to me that the great Alastair, one of the oldest of us all, hasn’t fallen from grace as the rumormongers claim,” Crispin taunted gently. Dealing with Alastair was an act akin to walking a tightrope one hundred feet in the air. He was completely insane, any little word could set him off, and had. Crispin had detested his existence for so long he was almost thankful to have a new focus — keeping the vampire who’d made him a vampire in his own right, from slaughtering innocents whenever he could.

  Alastair looked down to the now screaming baby dangling from his hand by one leg and lifted it to inspect it once more. “Why won’t it shut up?!” Alastair asked exasperatedly. Then he looked at Crispin. “You may have the damned thing!” he said, tossing the baby carelessly in Crispin’s direction. “I’m away to find more entertaining prey. You tell the gossipmongers, they are next.” In the next moment, before Crispin even caught the screaming baby, Alastair was gone, seeming to have evaporated into thin air.

  Crispin lunged forward rushing toward the baby, barely catching the child before he hit the floor. He caught the child up in his arms and did his best to soothe the child as he walked toward the small group of young children huddled in the corner watching him. Some of them were sobbing, and yet others stared with wide eyes as he approached. He held the child out to the oldest boy who seemed to be about eight or nine years of age. “Take the baby, he is unharmed.”

  The boy hesitated, but darted forward and grabbed the baby before slipping back into his spot in front of the other children. “You need to keep those windows closed at night,” Crispin told them, indicating the huge, old windows that ran from the floor to almost the top of the vaulted ceilings in the old orphanage. “In the daylight they’re fine, but at night you need to close them. You need to place a cross in each window, and splash some holy water across the window sill of each. Do you understand?” Crispin asked.

  The boy nodded vigorously.

  “It will keep my kind out. They will go where there are no wards in place, rather than back here,” Crispin explained.

  The boy nodded again.

  Crispin walked over to the first of four windows and pulled it down, closing it tightly. He did the same with the remaining three windows, then turned to face the boy who’d ventured a little closer to him.

  “I can’t help you with the holy water, but I can send crosses to the orphanage with instructions they are to be displayed in the windows here in your dormitory at night, and on the outside of the doors that lead into this dormitory as well. You should be safe for the remainder of this night. The crosses will be delivered tomorrow, you will know what to do with them, won’t you?” Crispin asked.


  “Yes, sir,” the boy answered on a whisper.

  There were footsteps outside the door before a portly nun rushed into the room, coming to a stop as she crossed herself and began mumbling her prayers when she saw Crispin standing there.

  “Stop your chattering, woman. I am no threat to these children or you.”

  The nun’s chattering as she rushed her prayers actually got louder.

  “Hush!” Crispin said to her. The sound of the woman’s praying just intensified. “Do you hear me, woman? Hush!” Crispin said so loud he almost shouted.

  The nun startled into silence as she watched him.

  “These children need more protection than you’ve afforded them. Each of these windows needs a cross in it leaned up against the glass, and mounted on the doors that give entry to this room. Holy water will be sprinkled on the windowsills as well.”

  “There are not enough crosses,” the woman whispered as she clung to her rosary. “We keep those we have in the rectory.”

  “There will be a delivery tomorrow. There will be a cross in every window every evening before the sun sets. You will see to the holy water on the window sills. Do you understand?”

  The woman didn’t seem to understand, or she resented being commanded by what she considered a devil.

  “I said, ‘Do you understand?’” Crispin repeated, with more force to his words.

  “Yes!” the nun responded with alarm in her voice.

  “I will check back. If you’ve not taken precautions, I will come for you. Do you understand? Keep these innocents safe from my kind,” Crispin ordered.

  The nun nodded, sidling across the room and taking up a position in front of the children.

  “Very good,” Crispin said softly. He made eye contact with the boy still standing only a few feet away from him, still holding the quieted baby in his arms. He inclined his head to the boy one time, then closed his eyes and faded away, his intent to try to track Alastair wherever he’d gone this time.