Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  After a short time, we moved away, going to the back of the room. I aimed for an empty spot by a wall to claim as my own. I did not realize that as we passed a hush fell. Mrs. Donovan, whom I had never before met, had followed in our wake. When I stopped and faced forward, she stood there, a tall thin willowy brunette, her eyes puffy, her face tear swollen, but she was composed and very purposeful.

  "Miss Soulsmith? I am Amanda Donovan, Richard's wi.... “Her voice broke a little, as she started to call herself wife, but changed it to widow.

  "Yes, Mrs. Donovan.” My mouth tasted of sawdust. My blood stopped pumping. “I am truly sorry for your loss. Officer Donovan was an exceptional person."

  "Thank you for your condolences. But, Miss Soulsmith, I demand much more from you. You were with Richard before he died. Before he was murdered.” She constantly knotted a white lace handkerchief while she spoke.

  I murmured, “Yes."

  Traeger tried to escort her elsewhere. “Amanda, please, come sit down."

  Her eyes went wide, the whites scary in her pale thin face. “The reports, from you Traeger, from the papers, say she KNOWS the monster that did this. Miss Soulsmith can identify Richard's killer. You can, can't you? You'll help the police find him. Won't you, Miss Soulsmith?"

  Her voice and composure had grown progressively strained. She practically begged me to assure her that, although I had not been an actual eyewitness to Richard Donovan's slaughter, I could identify Rasputin in order to gain justice for her husband's death. Others tried to intervene, tried to lead her away. She continued to stare at me, asking again and again, “You will, won't you? You will? You will ... bring us justice, won't you?"

  Someone, an older brother by the resemblance, began to gently pull her away. Amanda Donovan grasped my hand. One final, lucid time she asked me, “You will, won't you, Miss Soulsmith?"

  "I promise. I will.” And that was a vow I intended to make good on. With a grim nod of satisfaction, her hands shuddered loose of mine as she was drawn away. She was gone then, eerily quiet and calm. I, however, was trembling, chilled from head to foot. “Traeger, I don't think I can manage any more. I'll call you ... sometime soon."

  "Do you want someone to go with you?” he offered.

  "No, thanks,” I reassured him with a small smile. I wanted to be alone, to escape, to break down. “I'll be okay."

  He nodded, concern still etched upon his features. “Goodnight, Avna. Drive safe."

  "Goodnight.” I slipped from the funeral parlor and out the hall. No one else accosted me. I crossed out the front entrance of the Sampson and Parker Funeral Home, and a camera bulb flashed in my face. Patrice Blanchard, reporter for the Kanawha Gazetteer, and my nemesis from the lurid Lantaglia Voodoo murder trial, had me cornered. She was slick as snot. I never saw her coming.

  "Sources say you're pretty tight with the vampire community, Miss Soulsmith. What's your response? Are they hiding one of their own? Protecting a vicious undead killer who is stalking the Kanawha Valley?"

  "You're the bloodsucker. You tell me."

  "I'm just reporting news.” Her professional exterior, groomed perfectly in a flattering double breasted dress suit of forest green, short brown hair in cute cork screw curls a la Shirley Temple, French nails manicured and polished in magenta, disguised her unethical tactics. Pettiness made me glad to see she didn't rate a photographer. She had a 35 mm dangling about her neck, the one she had snapped in my face, temporarily blinding me.

  "If you won't comment, I'll have to try, try, try again.” Pointedly, she shifted her hard gaze to the funeral home and those inside.

  I thought of poor Mrs. Donovan. Surely, Patrice Blanchard wouldn't ambush the family, the wife, out here, too? I called her bluff. “Get lost, Blanchard."

  The reporter clicked off her micro cassette recorder which she slid into her tight skirt pocket. “Talk to me. Give me everything. Or I'll print how cozy you have become with Charleston's best known progenitor. My readership would just eat that up with a spoon."

  I gave her an unconcerned smile. “Print it, then.” There was no way to deny that I had been inside the Constantinople. But how did she know that I had had face-to-fang dealings with Constantine? Her source, whoever it was, could have damaging information, especially about Tanya and Calvin Hamilton and, in Calvin's case, what monstrous entity he had been turned into. That would create a public panic. With witch-hunts. Or, more precisely, vampire-hunts.

  "If you want a comment on that score, Ms. Blanchard, go ask Constantine, himself.” I raised my face skyward to measure the last of the twilight. “He'll be available in about a half an hour."

  "You can't scare me. I just might head there right now. Questions need to be answered concerning two murders in this city in less than a week. Gory, bloody, vampire attacks. If Constantine doesn't have the balls to do something about it, maybe I know someone who does."

  "Good.” I started to walk away. “Oh, by the way, exactly what blood type are you, Ms. Blanchard? I'll call Constantine and tell him to expect you."

  She turned a purplish shade. As I drove away, rolling slowly past the statuesque reporter, I thought it suited her perfectly. Having a laugh at her expense, however, was the only pleasant spot in my evening. The ordeal inside the funeral home—confronted by Amanda Donovan—left me wiped out. I bee-lined for home, wanting to sleep and recuperate.

  So, that's what I planned: a quiet night at home, soaking in the tub, watching a screwball comedy, or checking out the cable channels, then turning in early. The vampire set could rule the night. I craved normalcy. Sleeping at night and living during the day, not the reverse. Not bloodied corpses strewn over the Boulevard, nor unregistered reanimates stolen from out of the morgue, nor hellish things that guarded a dank cellar full of coffins. Nor, especially, any reminders of Constantine, the master of all things superficially seductive but underneath savage.

  The evening went according to plan. I baked pre-made brownies and I ate the whole cookie sheet full. Waste not, want not. The next item on my agenda was to soak myself like a prune. I ran a steaming torrent into the old porcelain tub. It filled, burbling and warm. Off came the navy dress, discarded into the wicker hamper. I brushed my teeth in the sink while the bath still ran full blast. Then, when I had a virtual sauna, I tossed bra and panties after the dress, and got in, submerging everything, washing dirt and fatigue and worries away. I stayed with my head propped against the back of the tub for nearly an hour, until the water went tepid, and I was in danger of falling asleep and sinking under the water. Dripping, I got out and toweled off, feeling cleansed. Too bad the summer heat still permeated my upstairs apartment.

  I lazed on my bed in a skimpy camisole set, propped up on a pile of pillows as I flipped through a thousand cable channels in search of a fluffy romantic comedy. I grew drowsier and drowsier. At midnight, the witching hour, the remote happened to stumble upon Love At First Bite, a frothy vampire send-up. I shut off the TV. Coincidence was never just coincidental.

  With that discomforting thought, I called it a night. I switched on the fan, sprawled on the top of my rose colored comforter, and soon snored with abandon. Some time later, in the deeper hours of the night, I commenced dreaming ... of sleeping ... with a ghostly lover.

  At first, I thought I was wide awake, disturbed by the fan blowing across my exposed legs. I shivered with the sensation of cold air upon hot limbs. Then, it felt more like the slight caress of skin against skin, an exotic massage to my feet, a feathery touch running up my calf. Contentedly, I grinned, rolled onto my side, and commanded myself back to sleep.

  I resumed my snoring. Nothing romantic about that. Until, I found myself being gently maneuvered once again onto the flat of my back. I threw an arm across my eyes and bent one leg, kneecap pointed toward the ceiling. It was a classic leave me alone I'm not interested in anything but sleep pose.

  The dream became slowly more insistent. Weight, not heavy, not uncomfortable, not even real, progressed up the length of my body, as
if someone lay down with me, atop me, molding to me, brushing my splayed leg even wider, snuggling into the hollow created there. Part of me fought to wake up. My head thrashed on my pillow, but the weight now had hands that clasped either side of my face to hold me immobile. One ghostly leg began to rub suggestively against my inner thigh. The rubbing continued in unison with kissing, wet slippery kisses that sucked first at my earlobe, traced along my right cheek, flowed down that jaw, along my neck, and onward to sup at my breast, to suckle at my nipple.

  Throbs of wanting and need pounded within me, wickedly delicious. My pussy quaked. Within the safety of this marvelous dream, I wanted to be fondled there. I wanted his fingers to explore that puffed up, creamed up slit.

  I groaned, to rouse myself, to wake up, to not surrender, but the sounds I made were immediately smothered with that other's mouth which greedily sucked at my lips, then probed in and out with its own tongue, swift and sure and inflaming. A hand massaged at my breast with strong knowledgeable fingers. Electric fingers. Exhilarating fingers. Erotic fingers. He shaped and pushed and cupped me through the thin material of my pretty forget-me-knot-flowered camisole. I moaned again, only, this time, it was a strangled carnal sound. I begged for more such intimacy. All those strokes and kisses needed to be focused on my pulsing clit!

  I throbbed so hard it was painful. To ease that pain, I ground myself against the phantom, meeting shallow unfulfilling thrusts that built the awful hurting to the next level, but still not high enough! I wrapped my legs around his waist and demanded with short rough jerks of my groin that he assuage the ache therein. But he merely slid against me to further tease and torment.

  "Please.... “I hated that word, yet I hated worse still this unquenchable ache. I needed release. I bucked and heaved harder to get myself to that ultimate place where the mind froze and the only semi-coherent thought you had was of pleasure, and the only words you could utter were whimpers of encouragement and enjoyment. He, the son-of-a-bitch, was still engaged in extended foreplay by raking our fully clothed bodies against each other, straining to join, promising orgasmic explosions, but prolonging the ultimate fulfillment.

  To repay him in kind, I skimmed a hand between us and cupped him. Although invisible, he was still satisfyingly substantial, rigid, fully engorged, big. I wanted to share naked flesh, to hold him, to gently squeeze him, perhaps, even more daring than I had ever managed in my life, to actually taste him. My body craved sex. My pussy was electrified. The intensity was so frustratingly good that I cried out, thankfully, to the ultimate power. “Oh, god, please...!” The roving hands stilled, the rhythmic thrusts paused, the French kiss ended abruptly. And, I could no longer ignore who—or more correctly what—would halt mid coitus because The Deity had been ecstatically called upon. My dream lover had a name. Constantine ... The Great.

  The realization doused me like a bucket of ice water. A memory from my shanghaied visit to his penthouse lair haunted me. He had called me a ‘sensitive'. The implication had been that I harbored exceptional paranormal abilities, that I could make psychic connections, that I, basically, drew HIM to me! Yet, if that were true, he had exploited that sensitivity, since I had no control over it.

  Disembodied, he had flowed into my home to fuck me while I was unresisting. I had been asleep. He had been awake. I had been dreaming. He had been fantasizing, consciously, about me. Constantine had superimposed his fantasies over my dreams. Et Voila! He had initiated long distance transcendental sex. Or, in this case, pretty darn close to the grand climax. Almost, but not quite, there.

  "For God's sake, get out!” I hoped that that simple, powerful word was agony for him.

  His shadow self fled. I lay there a total mess, angry and aroused at the same time. If only I kept a vibrator in the house, I could properly finish the job. On second thought, it was best to punish my traitorous body. It had far too easily responded. To him. To Constantine. To a progenitor. I got up and took a cold shower. And, before I crawled, humiliated and alone, back into my violated bed, I gathered up nails and a hammer and tacked Sam Sachem's beautiful dream catchers directly above where I slept.

  As I lay there guilty and ashamed, I felt their protective force, and I could not help but wonder why I had not remembered to hang them earlier. Simply an oversight, I assured myself. But another little voice, the one that was usually always right but which I nevertheless habitually disregarded, mocked me. Careful there, Avna, your Freudian slip may be showing. As if! I drowned out that nasty little voice with a 20 decibel snore. Almost having sex was exhausting.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter Eleven

  Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

  Wednesday progressed as a normal day, after an abnormal night. The alarm eventually, and with difficulty, roused me at around ten o'clock. My eyes grated with sand, my mouth tasted of who-knows-what. More than half asleep, I fixed a yummy breakfast. Something healthy. Served in a bowl. With milk. Cardboard-like bran flakes dotted with raisins, washed down with lots and lots of hot sweetened tea. I continued to feel draggy, lethargic. The May morning sun filtered in through the thin curtains at the large French-style window. The soft beams were mesmerizing. I shook off the urge to go back to bed—to sleep the sleep of the undead—instead taking a quick shower and dressing in regulation jeans and shirt, fresh dark denim complemented with sky blue cotton. Unfortunately, I was neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed when I stumbled my way downstairs.

  It was close to noon and De Facto Self Defense would shortly open for business. People were actually lined up, waiting to get in. Ginny, the first at the door, her petite frame jostled against the glass by the crowd, managed to get inside without letting the others force their way in, too. She performed a miracle by not smashing any fingers or toes in the door when it slammed shut. Tucked under her arm was the morning edition of the Kanawha Gazetteer.

  "Take a look at this.” She unfolded the paper. My blood chilled upon reading the awful headline: Killer Vampire's Reign Unchecked. A secondary headline added, City Considers Curfew. Two more victims, a teenaged couple, Dean Isen and Sally Cuthbert, had been found on the Vandalia Elementary School's playground ... near the swing sets. Near each other, or what was left of each other. The report, bylined to Patrice Blanchard and accompanied by a bad picture of yours truly, gave extreme stomach-churning details of the gruesome crime. Her article also misquoted me as saying, “If you want answers to your questions about these murders, talk to Constantine.” Blanchard's slant made it sound as if I were accusing, in her words, “the Capitol City's sole progenitor” of the ghastly crimes.

  The article proclaimed me a bonafide consultant to the Federal Bureau of Interspecies Coexistence.

  An old adage said there's no such thing as bad publicity. I would beg to differ. De Facto Self Defense did not want business from a frightened township, especially when my name and so-called reputation had helped fan the hysteria. I refolded the offensive paper and flung it onto my desktop. “Why didn't I keep my big mouth shut?"

  Ginny scowled. She moved to the far side of my desk, seated herself in the wheeled office chair, and distractedly tidied a pile of unopened mail. Her hand came to rest upon the newspaper, atop the article in question. “You didn't say these terrible things. Did you?"

  "No ... not the way she's printed it. I merely name dropped to scare her. She ambushed me in front of the funeral home when I attended Officer Donovan's viewing. So, when she brought up my meeting with Constantine—at the request of the police, I might add—I told her to ask him for comment. She practically accused me of joining the vampire fraternity."

  "Which, naturally, offended you.” Ginny, she of copper haired Irish descent, let fly her anger. “You're impossible, Avna. Now the entire city suspects Constantine, and all his people, of these deaths."

  "Patrice Blanchard twisted my words. How is that my fault?” I huffed, then went on the offensive. “Besides which, in a roundabout way, Constantine is responsible. He drew Rasputin to this to
wn. I didn't. He has the power to face off with a progenitor. I don't. Traeger dragged me kicking and screaming into the middle of this vampire war. I don't want any more casualties on either side, vampire or human."

  "Are you sure about that?” Ginny tilted backward in the desk chair in order to glare at me full in the face. I finally noticed that today she wore no chocker, no high collar, no bandage to camouflage her neck. There were several healed over pin pricks, overlapping so that they were impossible to count. They looked old, although I wasn't much a judge of such matters. Unconsciously, I stroked my own throat, swallowing with difficulty. How must that feel? I could all too vividly imagine it. In the throes of passion, exposing that erogenous spot to the ultimate kiss, a penetration that recalled, no, that intensified, that trebled, the actual sex act.

  I silently cursed Constantine. I had never before been so preoccupied with S-E-X. I was old fashioned, a champion of monogamy not promiscuity. In less than a week he had almost turned me into what some experts called a vampire fetishist.

  Ginny's smoky green eyes, lovely against the cream of her paler than usual complexion, revealed contempt. She had witnessed that envious caress of mine. How could she not! I'd practically gone into a full blown fantasy. “Dying to ask about Gerard? I've never known you to be timid about my personal life before, Avna. Ask. About any intimate detail. Where? When? How much?” Her voice cracked. She started to cry. When she bowed her head, the silken, copper curtain of her hair obscured her tears, but not her heaving shoulders.

  I held her while she sobbed. It took better than fifteen minutes for her to calm down. In the meantime, a customer, some idiot in a ball cap, banged against the plate glass window, pointing at his watch. It was half past twelve. I should've opened the shop by now.

  "Keep your pants on,” I barked at him, then placed myself between Ginny and the shop's huge window, blocking her from sight of those gathered. “Ginny, what is it?"

  Tears stained her pretty face. She gave me a defiant stubborn glance. “Like you care about my relationship with a vampire."