Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  Wearily, I stepped up a couple more rungs. My progress was slow, painstaking, my balance in jeopardy with every movement. For an instant, a wave of dizziness nearly overcame me. I clung to the ladder for all I was worth.

  Constantine startled me. He hung, head downward, on the ladder as if about to slither its length, slicky-slide fashion. “Hurry, Miss Soulsmith.” The urgency in his voice made my heart nearly jump into my throat.

  Then I heard a scratching in the dark below me. Worse still the ladder bowed with added weight as someone, or something, stepped onto the ladder.

  "Ohmigod!” Fear prompted those words thoughtlessly out of my mouth. Constantine jerked in reaction to my invoking a deity.

  Through gritted teeth, he repeated himself. “Hurry."

  I scrambled upward. Slavering sounds followed me, as did a foul rotting stench. I was closer to the top. Constantine's face twisted with hatred at the thing coming after me.

  Suddenly, the ladder bounced as the added weight dropped off with a thud. It had given up pursuit, or so I thought.

  Constantine, now on the opposite side of the cellar door, stretched out to me. “Give me your arm. Now!"

  I reached up but was still inches from his outstretched hand. I felt the ladder being knocked out from under me. I screamed, not knowing what horror awaited me below in the inky black. The ladder grated against concrete. It titled. I began to fall ... when Constantine, superhuman progenitor that he was, grasped my arm. I swung helplessly. He began to pull me upward, the strain of doing so etched upon his handsome face. Apparently, I weighed considerably more than a feather.

  I rose higher and higher, gritting my own teeth in response to the pain in my uninjured arm and shoulder. Constantine had very nearly pulled me to the top. He awkwardly tried to lever me up over the lip of the cellar's rim. My legs were still dangling into the pit.

  In the frightening instant before Constantine made one last giant heave, something leaped up and grabbed for me. All it managed was to pull loose my shoe, mate-less ever since I had lost the other on the rain-slicked lawn of the Tattoo Emporium. I crumpled partially onto Constantine, seeing the twins concerned faces over his shoulder.

  I managed to sit upright. “I should probably say thank you.... “But that was all the thanks I intended to give.

  And Constantine knew it. He laughed ruefully. “You are more than welcome."

  Morbid curiosity drew me to peer down into the total darkness of the pit-like cellar. My flashlight had been broken, probably trod upon, shutting off its pitiful rays. Nevertheless, I saw, or imagined, a pair of red rimmed eyes. I shuddered and was glad that I could see nothing more. However, there were sounds, slavering, grunting, and nails scrabbling against concrete. “What is it? And why didn't you know it was down there?"

  "I suspect that is the remnants of Calvin Hamilton, driven mad by privations such as Tanya is enduring. As for why I did not sense his presence? He is a shield to his masters, and, they, in turn, are a shield to him. Two progenitors slept here. That is a powerful combination. Plus, I had certain preoccupations.” He made that last word—preoccupations—sound positively filthy.

  I nodded my understanding. Awkwardly, I tried to stand. Constantine assisted. I accepted, mainly because blood rushed from my head and I felt faint. My vision blurred, fogged, dimmed. Yet, for all that I could scarcely see, once I had regained my feet, I instantly knew the room was different.

  "Thomas is gone!” His corpse wasn't where I had last seen it, although the others, Gnarly, Beluga, even Benjamin, hadn't so much as twitched.

  "Marc, let's go after him!” Max did not wait for his brother to answer. He began to sprint away until, that is, my raised voice halted him.

  "Don't let them, Constantine,” I asked of their master, even willing to beg that Thomas be allowed to escape. If I had to.

  The twins instantly froze in their tracks, glancing from me to Constantine, impatiently waiting for the order to pursue. It did not come.

  Constantine's features reflected jealousy, until he hooded his brilliant blue eyes, cobra-like, and upheld my order with the barest nod of his head. “I shall spare him, my little Soulsmith, although your attraction to him makes me reluctant. This Thomas of yours,” Constantine's lips curled nastily around his name, “has latent powers. When our paths cross again, I shall show him to what purpose I spared him. There is a price yet to be paid."

  Max, however, took the order very ill. Rasputin's people had taken, had tortured, had for all intents and purposes destroyed his Tanya. He did not want a single one of them spared. His anger needed a release, so that he rounded on Josh, crouched on the makeshift seat, bowed over at the waist. Haley Davis pressed a dressing to him. Max's voice thundered angrily. “You sat there and let him resurrect. He's escaped!"

  Josh, seeming somewhat dazed, glanced up at Max, then he looked to me. “I didn't exactly just let him walk out. He sort of took me by surprise when he shoved a pine plank in my guts."

  I really wished I hadn't caught a glimpse of the wound which Haley was trying to staunch. She basically was re-stuffing intestines into him. I fainted, trying to reassure myself that after all I had witnessed I was entitled. Fainting absolutely did not make me a wuss.

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  Chapter Ten

  "No Comment"

  I supposed if you fainted then you couldn't complain too much about where you woke up. Luckily I wound up at Ginny's place, a small Tudor style house on the outskirts of town. I hadn't been taken, while incapacitated, to the Constantinople. That would have been bad. In the extreme.

  As it was, I had blacked out for several hours with no recollection of when or how I had been delivered to Ginny. Late on Tuesday morning, I roused, magically cleaned up and re-dressed in black silken loungewear, and tucked under a blanket upon her living room couch. She informed me that Haley Davis had accompanied the twins in bringing me there. Of Constantine, there had been no trace, which irked me.

  "He didn't even have the decency, the concern, the courtesy to personally see me home! He just let his lackeys dump me on your doorstep. Even though he has permission to enter here, I assume?” I asked from the plush comfort of a black and white modern sectional that crowded the small area.

  "That's not fair. Constantine's people can't enter your home. So they brought you here, where, yes, they are all welcome. And they did not just dump you on the front stoop.” Ginny's temper flared.

  "I should consider myself fortunate that he at least sent a chaperone for those two juvenile delinquents."

  Ginny chucked. “Yea, Marc and Max are a handful."

  "That's putting it mildly. I'd call them a couple of little perverts. Cute but still perverts.” I yawned and stretched, fearing a multitude of aches and pains, but nothing hurt, except for a mild twinge in my left arm, now no longer immobilized by the sling. I experimentally rolled to a sitting position. “What gives? I'm not stiff or sore.” I pulled away a few of the bandages on my arm. The minor cuts had faded, the deeper ones were scabbed and fast healing.

  "Ginny, last night Nurse Davis said that she thought I would heal quickly,” I took a closer look at my light-pink scarred shinbone, “but this is plain freakin’ unnatural."

  Ginny looked as confused as I felt. “Maybe you weren't hurt as badly as you thought?"

  "Maybe not.” But I wasn't convinced. My left arm, the one Haley had immobilized in a sling, had been fractured, if not outright broken. The rest of me had been battered and bruised. I should be one big ache. So why wasn't I? Or perhaps the better question was did I really want to know why I wasn't? I shelved this unsettling topic for my own peace of mind, since there couldn't be a satisfying answer, or one that didn't involve you know who.

  I rubbed at my gritty eyes. “What time is it, anyway?"

  "It's after noon."

  I hid my startlement at having been unconscious for that long. “I need to go open the shop. Can you give me a lift?"

  "Sure thing, after you have some b
runch."

  "Pancakes and sausage?"

  "Certainly.” Ginny, elegant in a garnet colored tank dress, headed for the kitchen.

  I followed and plunked myself onto one of the high backless bar stools at the island-like counter which divided the dining area from the kitchen. While I watched, she did the domestic thing, with bowls, measuring cups, spatulas, matching plates and cutlery, and powdered sugar for the pancakes.

  Her kitchen, in fact the entire house, was a domestic paradise, well-ordered, well-decorated, well-kept. And absolutely demon free. But I had a sharp twinge of memory of the two episodes, three years apart, when I had been called upon to exorcise what, in my inexperience, I had thought to be a harmless, but-hard-to-banish poltergeist.

  The first encounter had been relatively tame. Items, such as jewelry, hairbrushes, magazines, furniture, were systematically rearranged. But such small annoyances had escalated to more important things—utility bills, car keys, personal effects—actually disappearing. The bumps-in-the-night had begun to get very loud and very disturbing. Then, the pushing and punching and pinching had started.

  Ginny, at wits end to keep her lovely just-purchased home, had desperately called me in after two nationally accredited exorcists, one a Bishop, had failed. Spectacularly. I had rid the place, or so I had thought, of the prankish spirit only to have it return three years later. With a vengeance. There had been an escalation in physical assaults, the number and the severity. And, too, electrical appliances, especially here in the kitchen where a bread knife had given me a real scare, had gone sadistically haywire. After a long, hair-rising, and rather improvised ceremony, I had again managed to banish the obviously demonic presence. But the third anniversary of that second exorcism had just passed. Three years had also lapsed between the first and second exorcisms, when the presence had returned. I couldn't help but warily look around the room and wonder if another reoccurrence was likely. Particularly since Ginny was using an expensive juicer to squeeze us some oranges. Appliances had been the evil spirit's favored MO.

  Unaware of my slight unease, she began flipping uniformly round cakes on the griddle. The sausage links began to sizzle. Spatula at the ready, she turned to the frying pan.

  I sipped at my pulp-free juice, trying not to slurp with my usual relish. “Bye-the-bye, where was Gerard last night during the brouhaha?” Not that I really cared but, as an afterthought, his absence did seem odd.

  Instead of an answer, Ginny let out an exclamation when a bit of grease popped onto her hand. “Owwww.” She ran cold tap water over the angry red skin for several minutes.

  My question went unanswered because I was more concerned with Ginny's grease burn. And then, she further turned the topic with the lure of food. Ginny divvied up a stack of pancakes and a mass of sausage links. So, of course, I didn't spare another thought on the whereabouts of one Gerard Lamphere, Constantine's right-hand-vampire. Besides, my mind was busy scheduling the rest of my day. I had to open De Facto Self Defense, take care of some paperwork, plus update my inventory. And, later that evening, at around seven o'clock, I had plans for an appearance at Officer Donovan's viewing. The thought immediately ruined my appetite. Even for pancakes and sausage.

  * * * *

  Ginny dropped me off at my own place just before one. When I opened up for the day, several hours late, I had some interesting customers: a mysterious lady looking for a hex (which I'm sure she would have used on me, after I politely informed her that De Facto Self Defense did not trade in black magic), a well-to-do couple purchasing a ward for pixies, and a yuppie come in search of a dowsing stick (I explained to him that either you had the knack or you didn't and most dowsers made their own equipment).

  There was also a long phone call to Traeger, confirming that the authorities were well in charge of the Tattoo Emporium ... and the thing in the cellar. Zellden's people had put it down, rather inhumanely it sounded to me. They had torn out a wall, ripped open a good portion of the cellar's ceiling, and subjected it to daylight. The thought of Calvin Hamilton, an innovative vampire entrepreneur, being twisted into a starved crazed thing made my skin crawl, no less so than the means he had been ultimately destroyed by. The call had left me gloomy.

  Then, as if to lift my mood, just before closing, Sam Sachem, one of my suppliers, came into the shop.

  "'lo, Sachem.” I beamed at the old man. His chiseled tanned features and the feathers twined in his waist length salt-n-paper hair proclaimed his Shawnee heritage. Arthritis in one bowed knee gave him an odd rolling gait.

  "Soulsmith.” His black eyes shined with pleasure. He refused to call me Avna, instead speaking my family name with reverence. As always, he offered up a varied collection of rings, broaches, pendants, and belt buckles all inlaid with semi-precious gem stones that were purported to offer efficacious properties, from healing to protection to stress relief. Many, seeing as I was his best client, were worked in silver. He also sold dream catchers in intricate patterns and colors, woven with bits of stones, feathers, metals. They were very popular.

  From out of a large leather pouch tied at his belt, Sam spread out a beautiful selection of his craftwork upon my desk. I handled the jewelry and haggled over prices, settling in his favor—which was my intention. If times were hard for me, they were harder for Sam. Like me, he seemed to have little family, save for a wayward grandson, and even less resources. But I considered his friendship a privilege. I respected him for many reasons—for his craftsmanship, for his honesty, for his warmth, and for his wisdom.

  I paid Sam and for another hour we chatted over coffee and chocolate covered doughnuts. Sam had a way of hearing anything of interest on the streets. Today, however, he was tightlipped, especially when I brought up the subject of the current unsolved vampire murders.

  And my involvement.

  "Surprisingly, the Gazetteer's account was accurate,” I begrudgingly admitted.

  Sam pursed his mouth. “Yes, I read the story. Bad business. A new undead long tooth on the rampage. I think to myself, mebbe, the city's other dark prince must be involved. Some predators are territorial, no?"

  "And you haven't heard anything ... strange ... or ... out-of-the-ordinary ... that could help me?"

  Sam's eyes gleamed like black marble. He reached into his pouch one more time and withdrew a trio of matching dream catchers done in a color scheme of scarlet and black on the intricate spider-like webbing. They were double the normal size. “Take these. I think, mebbe, bad things bring bad dreams."

  "Thank you, Sachem.” I intended on hanging them ASAP. Perhaps I should have thought of this solution myself, for I was positive that Constantine had invaded my dreaming, although the progenitor had claimed it was the reverse, that I unconsciously reached out to him! Soon after bestowing his gift, at almost six p.m., Sam Sachem left. We exchanged short but meaningful hugs and wishes for good fortune.

  I officially closed shop simply by flipping the ‘We're Open’ sign to ‘We're Closed', took his gift with me upstairs, but had no time to hang the dream catchers because I had to get ready for poor Officer Donovan's visitation. It was going to be an emotional evening. For oh so many reasons.

  I rushed to get ready, slipping into a somber navy dress, and I drove myself to the Sampson and Parker Funeral Home. I had been there twice before for the funerals of both my mother and grandmother, so the way was indelible in my brain. Daylight was dwindling. I parked on the crowded lot and sat there in the heat of my car, gripping the wheel, steeling myself for the coming ordeal, trying to overcome a promise I'd made to my young self years ago—that, after burying my closest living and loving relatives, I would never attend another funeral. Ever. But, sometimes, out of respect for the grief others, such a selfish promise had to be broken, as now.

  Numbly, I crossed the wide parking area and into the cool foyer to be faced with professional ushers, grim faced and low voiced, opening doors and offering directions. The hall was filled with much of the police force, some of whom I knew well, Traeger, Max
i Penton, her partner, Cameron Styles, Agent Zellden, while others I knew only casually, Hap Chesterfield, Warren Martin, Bobby Nance, a gathering of law enforcement at the passing of a brother-in-arms.

  Traeger, sharp in a dark uniform, his bristly silvered-red crew cut well buffed, joined me. Together we walked through the open double doors. The pew-like seats held many mourners, a few prominent city officials, and more members of the force who met and returned my glance, nodded, offered a hello, or patted my back. The Donovan family was off in an adjoining chamber.

  "This is rough, Traeger.” Tears clung just barely unshed on my lashes. My chest hurt. A lump cramped my throat, painfully. It was rough for so many reasons. Death always was. But, in this case, I was the last person to see and to talk with Richard Donovan. I had braced for a less supportive reception in case Zellden had spread propaganda against me, having been found at the crime scene covered in the victim's blood. My presence, however, was welcomed, accepted in the fashion it was offered—respectfully.

  Yet, underneath the tragedy of Donovan's death, other painful emotions churned. I had not dealt well with the passing of my own loved ones. This place, this ritual, was a horrible reminder.

  "You're doing fine, kid. It's tough on everybody.” Traeger didn't use a lot of words, but I was buoyed up by the sentiment. We went to the front of the room where Donovan's portrait was displayed next to the closed casket. There were huge arrangements, sprays and baskets, everywhere. And, too, there was weeping. I could here it faintly but distinctly.