Blessed Curse

by Sandra R Neeley

  “Come along, Mouse. I tire of this game. I am waiting. One does not keep their mate waiting. Especially when their mate is also their maker. Come! Now!” the voice demanded, obviously building with anger.

  Solange very slowly moved toward the voice, which appeared to be in the cleared area she’d been moving toward. Only moments later she stepped from between two large boxes and came face to face with Alastair. He reclined on a filthy bed, his clothing the same as the last time she’d seen him. And his eyes were pinned to hers.

  “Mouse. I am warmed that you came home of your own volition. It is quite endearing. It will not save you from being punished however — you have been hiding from me for a very, very long time. It shows a complete lack of respect.”

  Solange stood still, listening to the absolutely insane male lying on the bed before her. Her emotions were roiling. She was facing a soulless creature who slaughtered innocents with absolutely no remorse. She was facing her mother’s murderer. She was facing her father. And she would kill him.

  “Do you not understand me?” he thundered, sitting up on the bed. “Come here at once and kneel before me. Prepare yourself to pay the price for not serving your maker as you should.”

  Solange watched the psychotic vampire order her to her knees. She smiled, then she laughed.

  Alastair became enraged, jumping to his feet. “You think me a joke?” he demanded.

  Solange shook her head, her laughter dying off. “No. I think you a sick fuck.”

  “You will pay for your insolence,” he said, moving toward her.

  “And you will pay for murdering my mother, Daddy Dearest!” she shot back, reaching up and snatching her cross from her throat. The moment the cross was no longer around her neck, her teeth were easily seen to have slightly elongated fangs, and her eyes glowed red.

  On being faced with a female vampire he wasn’t familiar with, Alastair paused, taking a moment to really look at her. “You are not my Mouse,” he finally whispered.

  “My mother, Adrienne, died at your hands. A pawn in your game against our family. She was never a Mouse. She had more courage and more strength than you ever thought to have.”

  Alastair laughed maniacally, losing concentration as he dissolved into laughter over the comment he found immensely funny.

  Solange chose that moment to attack. She materialized beside him, her left hand gripping his throat as she punched his face — making direct impact with his nose once, twice, three times, before releasing his throat to spin and kick him in the stomach, sending him flying back across the mattress as he snarled out his rage at being attacked.

  Alastair recovered quickly, launching himself at Solange, who met him head on. Blow after blow rained down as they battled each other relentlessly.

  At one point Alastair disappeared as Solange spun one direction, then the next trying to locate him. He was still there, she could feel him. “Where are you, Alastair?” she said seductively. “Do you fear me, is that why you hide yourself away?” she taunted.

  “Who. Are. You?” his voice echoed around her, his hatred and anger dripping from each slowly uttered word.

  Solange smiled. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m the curse you left my mother with. I’m the curse you cast upon her family. I’m the curse you gifted them, come back to haunt you. I’m your very own daughter.”

  Alastair was suddenly visible, about ten feet away from her, his ancient, bloodstained, filthy face registering shock. “Daughter?” he whispered, moving a few steps closer to her. Solange didn’t move, she held firm where she stood.

  “Mouse had a daughter?” he asked. He was confused, having a hard time distinguishing between his own warped version and reality itself. Suddenly he turned, charging across the basement. There was the sound of metal ripping away from the wall and then a girl’s scream. “Did you have the child? Did you?” he screamed, snatching the missing girl from the crawlspace where he’d shoved her until he decided to deal with her again.

  “Oh, fuck!” Solange muttered, moving quickly to get to Alastair and the girl that had somehow miraculously managed to survive more than twenty-four hours in his grasp.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t have a child, I promise!” she answered, apologizing profusely in order to appease the creature who had her in his grasp.

  “Leave her alone, fuckface,” Solange ordered.

  Alastair spun with the girl held up off the ground, his fingers wrapped around her neck as he held her up to his eye level. He looked at the girl in his hand, then looked at Solange, before focusing on the girl again. Finally, seeming to have reached a decision, he tossed the girl from his grip, causing her to land some fifteen feet away from them. Then he advanced on Solange.

  “I’ll kill you,” he promised.

  “I'm okay with that, as long as I get to take you with me,” Solange answered.

  Alastair advanced on her, snarling and growling the entire way. She stood her ground, flicking her fingertips at first one object then another, raining everything from floor lamps to dishes down on him as he tried to get to her.

  Each step he took was met with a piece of furniture or a stack of debris falling on him. Irritated with the constant assault on his person, with very little-to-no action from the female in front of him, he finally screamed. “What are you?”

  “I’m a deadly combination. I’m my mother’s daughter, and my father’s curse.” With that she attacked anew. Punching, kicking, striking, but Alastair fought back. A fight that actually lasted less than ten minutes felt like hours to Solange.

  Solange misstepped and found herself flat on her stomach with Alastair on top of her, strangling her from behind. Scrambling to find anything to fight him off with, she realized she’d have to dematerialize and come up behind him. She didn’t want to do that. It was the same reason she brought no weapons, the same reason she used as little of her magic as possible other than to taunt Alastair into being so flustered he made mistakes. She wanted to kill him with her own hand. Not with magic, not with magic weapons, she wanted to feel his life seep from this earth from between her fingers.

  Suddenly, her hand, floundering for anything substantial to help her fight him in any way other than using her magic, grasped the broken leg of a wooden chair lying tangled in one of the sheets that had been covering the furniture stored there. She smiled as she gripped it, then shoved herself up, throwing him off balance and spinning beneath him.

  Alastair was startled when she first unseated him, and forced his very lightweight body down on top of hers to keep her from getting away from him. But he should have paid more attention, because as he shoved himself down on top of Solange, she held the broken wooden chair leg upright, the broken sharp edge aimed toward his chest. His eyes noticed it, but not quickly enough. Solange gripped the chair leg in both hands as Alastair himself plunged it through his own heart with the momentum he used to try to shove himself down onto Solange.

  Alastair’s eyes grew wide with surprise, blood poured from the wound in his chest, around the one time chair leg — now stake — sticking out of his sunken, filthy flesh. He struggled to his feet and looked from the stake through his heart to Solange. Then he smiled weakly at her, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, before falling forward, face down on the floor, his body weight forcing the broken chair leg the rest of the way through his chest.

  A thud behind her had her spinning, prepared to fight again. She was prepared for anything other than the sight that greeted her. Crispin had arrived just in time to materialize in the basement just as she drove the chair leg through Alastair’s chest. And as Alastair collapsed, so did Crispin.

  “Crispin!” Solange shouted, limping toward him as quickly as she could. “Crispin!” she screamed, kneeling beside him and running her hands over him. “What is it? Where are you injured? Tell me!” she begged.

  Crispin offered her a resigned smile. “Maker,” he managed to get out.

  Solange continued to run her hands over him, smoothin
g her hands over his face. “What?” she asked, trying to understand.

  Crispin focused on her red eyes, managing to raise a hand and just barely touch her temple near her eyes. “Vampire. Witch,” he said slowly, stutteringly, before calmly closing his eyes.

  “Crispin!” Solange screamed, shaking him.

  The girl Alastair had thrown started crying from somewhere off to her left. That was enough to draw Solange’s attention since she was still on high alert. When she looked back to Crispin, reality broke through her foggy, emotional brain. He’d said maker. Her eyes flicked to a very dead Alastair, as his body shriveled and dried out. Alastair had turned Crispin. Alastair is dead, so all vampires he created will die, too.

  “No!” Solange shouted. “No!” she shouted again. Then she leaned over Crispin and pressed her ear to his chest. She started to sob, then heard a thump. She sat up and looked down at him. A heartbeat! Solange wasted no time. She grabbed his hair, yanking his head toward her, pressed her mouth against his throat and sank her fangs into his flesh. She drank, and drank, and drank.

  The girl Alastair had tossed across the room had crawled her way toward the staircase hoping to escape since she was no longer his focus. The moment she stumbled across Solange draining Crispin’s blood from his body, she began screaming.

  Snarling her frustration, Solange flicked the fingers of one hand in the general direction of the girl, lifting a dusty sheet from a pile of wrecked storage boxes and draping it over her. The girl was so startled and frightened by the development, she stopped screaming, thinking that she’d been captured by another vampire.

  Solange returned her attention to Crispin. With her fangs buried in his neck, she could feel his life force as it slowly ebbed away. Finally, she felt no heartbeat and his life force was so weak, she wasn’t quite sure there was one. She closed her eyes, sending her energies into Crispin, and there it was. A tiny, almost extinguished flame. Hurriedly Solange sat up, tearing into her own wrist until the blood coursed down her forearm toward her elbow.

  Solange gathered Crispin to her and pulled him into her lap, cradling him there as she allowed his head to hang off her legs, forcing his mouth to fall open. She held her wrist over his mouth, allowing her blood to spill into Crispin’s open mouth.

  Solange repeated prayer after prayer, and muttered spells she’d not thought of since she was a child obsessed with the idea that she could bring her mother back to life, and between the prayers and spells, she begged. “Just live, Crispy. Please, please! Even if you never want to speak to me again, just live,” she pleaded, sobbing as she tried in vain to drain his blood and turn him herself.

  She finally gave up, dropping her wrist to his mouth and laying her upper body across his chest as she cried in heartbreak over the only male she’d ever been drawn to, the only male she’d ever loved.

  Then the strangest thing happened. She felt movement against her torn wrist. Her breath caught, she lifted up and looked down at Crispin. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was definitely moving against her wrist.

  “Crispin!” she cried, positioning her wrist more tightly against his lips. “There you go. Drink, drink,” she begged.

  And he did. Slowly her blood began to fill his body. The entire time he fed from her, she murmured spells of life, spells of strength, and begged him to live.

  Crispin latched onto Solange’s wrist. He drank until his heartbeat was once again steady and strong. His senses were beginning to return. His sense of smell picked up blood, then Solange. He forced his eyes to open and fought against the need to let them fall closed again. After a few moments they finally focused on the two red pinpoints he could see through the fog he struggled to overcome.

  Then the area around those eyes came into focus. Solange. Those beautiful red eyes looking anxiously down at him belonged to his beloved Solange. His bloodstained lips trembled, he breathed deep, and struggled to speak. Finally, he managed to get one word out. “Mine,” he whispered.

  Solange smiled through her tears, finally laughing in relief. “Yes. Okay, yes.”

  Crispin seemed satisfied with her acceptance of his claim. He gave her half a smile and let his eyelids fall back over his eyes.

  Solange looked around the basement as she sat still holding Crispin in her arms. She couldn’t call for clean up like this, not with Crispin here at all, much less in the condition he was in. And the whimpering girl beneath the dusty sheet had seen her turning him. She couldn’t have E.V.I.E. hunting her Crispy.

  She scooted as close as she could to Crispin, then pulled him tightly into her arms. She glanced over at the sheet-covered shape not twenty feet from her and called out loudly, threateningly. “Do not move until someone comes for you. If you speak of me, I will hunt you down. Do you understand?”

  The sheet fluttered back and forth, so she took that to mean the girl was nodding. Then she pressed her face against Crispin. “Hold tight, Crispy. I’m taking us out of here.”

  Crispin’s hand was draped across his body, lying limply near her arm where she held him. He rubbed two fingers against the inside of her arm to let her know he heard her. Then before he knew it, she’d called the winds and whisked them away to the bedroom she was born in at Grandmama’s house. The room that still had blacked out windows, the room that would keep Crispin safe until she could figure out what to do next.

  Chapter 17

  Marceline lay propped up in her bed, doing her best to concentrate on the book in her hands. The house around her was quiet despite the unsettled, anxious feeling that had befallen her in the last hour. The feeling had to do with Solange, of that she had no doubt. Somewhere, somehow, Solange was in trouble.

  Marceline threw back the covers and slid her feet into her house slippers that were sitting beside the bed. She gathered her robe around herself and checked her reflection in the mirror. At over one hundred years old, she was still a force to be reckoned with. Her magics, her energies and her gumption in general kept her strong and spry. She rose every day and styled her silver-grey hair in a French twist piled high on her head, and dressed in her elegant yet understated skirts and dresses, and her matching heels. Granted they weren’t as high as they once were, but they were far from flat-heeled shoes.

  Marceline smiled at herself in the mirror. Even when dressed for bed, one had to be presentable at all times. One had to always appear to be in control. Satisfied that her hair was still sightly, and though dressed for bed, she was properly covered, she opened her bedroom door and started her third inspection of the house for the night. She started on the second floor, finished the first floor, and insured that all was as it should be. Some of her coven were still moving about the house, relaxing, watching television, whatever they wanted to do and none seemed to be anxious at all.

  She headed back upstairs, and had just set foot on the third floor landing when she heard a commotion coming from the front bedroom on the left. The bedroom no one was ever supposed to be in, the bedroom that Adrienne had given birth in, the bedroom that hadn’t been accessed since Solange had moved out to live on her own.

  Marceline focused on that bedroom, and without further hesitation headed straight for it. Before she could make it to the door, the door flew open and Solange, covered in blood came rushing out.

  Surprised to see Marceline standing there, she faltered only for a moment. “Grandmama, I need you!”

  “I’m here, Solange. Tell me,” Marceline said, grasping Solange’s shoulders despite her clothes being covered in blood.

  “I killed Alastair!” Solange rushed out, elation clear in her voice and on her face.

  Marceline embraced Solange, “I never doubted you would. I’m so proud of you, Solange. So proud.”

  “And I made a vampire,” Solange confessed worriedly.

  “You did what?” Marceline asked.

  “I made a vampire. And I still need to call Gillian for clean up. It’s just blocks from here!” Solange exclaimed, her adrenalin still pumping.

  “What a
bout you creating a vampire, Solange?” Marceline asked, trying to ground Solange in the moment.

  “Alastair turned a man. Crispy. And when I killed Alastair, Crispy started dying. I couldn’t let him die, Grandmama. He’s a good man!”

  A moan sounded from the bedroom drawing Marceline’s attention. She looked in that direction before looking back at Solange.

  “He was a vampire before, but then he was dying, so I just fed him my blood.”

  “After you drained him,” Marceline supplied.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Marceline asked.

  “Why what?” Solange asked, confused.

  “Why did you have to save him?” Marceline asked.

  Solange didn’t answer at first; her eyes were cast down at the floor. She was clearly struggling with her emotions.

  “Solange?” Marceline prompted.

  “Because he’s mine,” Solange finally confessed, still looking at the floor. “Or he would be if I weren't such a curse to everyone I come in contact with.”

  “Solange…” Marceline started, her heart hurting that Solange saw herself that way.

  “He’s in there. I put him in the room I was born in because the windows are darkened and I don’t know if the sunlight will kill him or not. Since I made him, you know? And I just don’t know what else to do. I don’t know!” Solange said, her voice rising in alarm.

  “Calm, Solange. Come along, child. Let’s see what he needs,” Marceline said, taking Solange by the hand and leading her back into the bedroom.

  Marceline didn’t hesitate, she went straight to Crispin lying on the floor. “Are you sure he’s safe, Solange?” Marceline asked.

  “Very sure. He’s a good person. Much better than I am.”

  Marceline shot Solange a look that said ‘we’ll talk about that comment later’, then knelt down to check on the man that Solange thought so highly of that she couldn’t allow him to die.

  After several moments, Marceline looked up at Solange. “He’s alive. His heartbeat is steady. I believe he will survive. I’m not familiar with any of this, Solange, but I believe that he will survive.” When Solange didn’t answer and just kept looking worriedly down at the man, Marceline spoke again. “Solange?”