Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  I puttered around the shop for several hours. I cleaned the glass cabinets, rearranged displays, and made a list of inventory to restock, including incense, some of the more exotic herbs, generic good luck charms, and a few chalices. Such chores got old fast. I decided on a late afternoon matinee, although I couldn't think about a movie without being reminded of Constantine and how he had waylaid me the last time I had gone to one. But I refused to let him ruin my life. So, after changing into a clean outfit of faded denims and a sleeveless cotton shirt, without a trace of makeup or jewelry, I went to the Cineplex. This time I used a different route, so that I did not pass the old-fashioned bench where his seduction had begun.

  Once in the darkness of the theater, my exhausted mind gave in to the comfortable high-back seats, the soothing flicker of the screen, the calm of a nearly empty house. As if I had been switched off like an appliance, or more aptly as if bidden to, I slept, never stirring until I awoke with a start, having somehow, suspiciously been allowed to remain undisturbed through two showings of the same film. It was now dusk. And vampires were stirring.

  I tried not to panic, but my fear was a tidal wave that rose high and hard to smash me down. I could scarcely think. I floundered for a moment then rose, feet squelching against the sticky floor. I groped and stumbled out of the aisle, scrambled up the steep carpeted stairs to shoulder through the theater's swinging double doors. Weaving through the thin crowd of movie patrons, I rushed headlong through the lobby and out onto the graying evening without having mowed anybody down! I sped down the sidewalk, sensing a malevolent pursuer although, in truth, I had a few precious minutes before the last bit of twilight blinked out. When it was gone, then I would be in serious trouble, especially as I felt cut off from Constantine. Other powers, unfamiliar and dark, seemed at work around me, sought to ensnare me.

  I pounded down the street like a hopped up sprinter. Every physical and emotional inch of me labored. I ran full tilt until a stitch pulled at my side. There were several blocks between me and De Facto Self Defense, between me and the safety of home. The stitch increased to a searing burn, aggravated by the psychic force which wanted me crippled. I pressed at the ache with a trembling hand and persevered, but I was nearly staggering. Drawing a breath was like eating lit charcoal.

  I faltered, knowing the exact instant that day surrendered to night. I had two more blocks to cover and little time before I would be descended upon by Rasputin. Even he, with all his supernatural power, still had to worm out of his lair before he could run me to ground. He was not physically close. Yet. Pain made me weave down the street. I had one more block to go. Rasputin was nearer. The burning in my side flared enough to drop me to my knees. I crawled. Not fast. But I still crawled.

  Then, I was at the door of my shop, clawing my keys from my pocket, inserting it with palsied hands, nearly weeping with relief when I scrambled inside the shadowed interior. I slammed it shut just as frantic pounding hammered at the glass! A woman, distressed and fearful, beat at my door. The panes jittered with the tremendous force of her blows. Through my own chaotic terror, I stared at her, finally recognizing the tall, handsome figure with brown corkscrew curls.

  "Patrice Blanchard?"

  "Please, let me in! They're right behind us!” She continued banging, threatening to shatter the double thick glass. She looked back over her shoulder, scanning the empty street. “My friend's still out there! Please! Please!” Her voice rose with each pound on the door.

  I knew from the sudden buzzing in my back molars and a stabbing migraine-like pain in my temple, that vampires were nearby. And Patrice Blanchard, pale and terrified, begged to be let in. The reporter's shrill terror overwhelmed me. Having only just barely escaped myself, I threw open the door.

  "Come in. Hurry."

  Patrice still looked back onto the street, screaming. “My friend, he's still out there!"

  "Do you see him? Where is he?” I tried to look over the height of her shoulder, but she blocked my line of sight. All I had to go on was an excruciating sting straight down the middle of my forehead. The evil undead were very, very near. I panicked. No human should be left to such a fate. “Bring him inside!” No sooner had the words escaped me, than I realized my mistake.

  Patrice, tall, pale, vixenish, smiled wickedly, all her theatrical pretense discarded. “Oh, I most certainly will. Snitch! Come out, come out, wherever you are, friend. We have been duly invited in."

  I nearly vomited upon her immaculate clad self, her sleeveless black velvet vest and mannish trousers. One-handed, the new vampiress tossed me backward. She crashed me into a huge display case. The contents rattled, but no more so than my own insides. Stooped-over eye-patched Snitch lurked in the doorway. He carried something—I couldn't make out what, not size, shape, nor color—in his hands. His one good eye fastened upon me, he was enjoying the fact that I was doubled over, nearly crumpled to the floor. He remained a gangly malformed shadow in the open doorway. He watched, laughing, showing his yellowed fangs, as Patrice manhandled me some more.

  She stood over top of me. “This is going to be fun.” And she grasped my shirtfront, bunching the material in her fists, using her strong hold to repeatedly ram me into the display case. It shattered at the first impact. I heard the glass splinter and break. The second ran a tiny sliver into my lower back. I tried not to cry out, but a muffled whuffling sound was buffeted from out my clamped lips as Patrice slammed me a third, and fourth time into the wood frame of the broken cabinet. Stuff spilled past me onto the floor, but I was too numb to grasp anything as a weapon.

  "What's the matter Soulsmith? Not so big and brave, huh? Not so clever, either.” She slung me in a half-circle, draping me belly-down across my own desk. Papers went flying. The old-style rotary phone crashed loudly to the floor. She grabbed up a handful of my hair and levered me slightly off the desk in a demonstration of her newfound physical strength. “How's this feel, I wonder?” Patrice dug her French manicured nails into the gash on my back, trying to widen the wound. This time I did scream. My eyes teared up. I cursed at her, but the sound came out a gasp.

  "Aren't you gonna summon Constantine? Call him for help? He might arrive before I snuff you out.” Her face was intense, beautiful, eyes shining with sadistic joy, mouth slightly parted with expectation. Patrice slapped me across the face. My head rolled with the blow. I didn't try to fight back. Against her augmented undead might, what was the point? She liked to inflict pain, but I presented an unfulfilling challenge. Disappointed, she flung me off the desktop onto the debris strewn floor with barely any effort.

  I lay gasping, pain-wracked and addle-brained. I foggily tried to think of some plan or of some weapon among the trash from my desk that I sprawled in. I had little to choose from. Nor had I even the least bond with Constantine. Terror crowded out any other thought, stoppered up my entire brain. I hadn't a single psychic synapse to spare! Besides which I doubted my ability to reach Constantine from such a distance.

  Patrice stooped over me. “Not so smart mouthed now. All alone. No progenitor to hide behind. He won't come to your rescue. You're just a dime-a-dozen human."

  "Why don't you call him yourself, then, bitch?” I reared up, grabbed the heavy outdated rotary phone, and slammed it square into her nose, busting the casing—and her face—to smithereens. She was going to beat me to a bloody pulp, anyway, so I might as well have gotten in at least one good shot. She staggered backward, a hand pressed to her mangled face. When, angrily, she swiped her hand away, flinging a bloody trail through the air, her pert little nose appeared broken, bashed nearly flat. Her upper lip was also split. The pain didn't seem to faze her, but she was really pissed at having been disfigured.

  "You are going to pay for this so dearly.” Patrice Blanchard, her elegance now blood and pulp, lisped her not-so-insubstantial threat.

  I hadn't expected her to recover so soon or so forcefully. She whipped the phone cord about my throat. It cut deep into my windpipe. I struggled to dig my fingers underneat
h it. For several minutes, I fought like a wild, mindless thing, kicking, flailing, twisting. But it doesn't take long to suffocate. My hands still pulled at the thin, lethal cord, but I was weakening. In the near dark, Patrice's massacred features, notably protruding cartilage and runny red gore against chalky white skin, hovered above me. She was wreathed in bloody smiles.

  "Not dead yet?” She purred, a red rivulet dripping from her lips.

  No! I fought to shake my head, to deny her taunt. I did not want to die! Not at her hands! Not at all! Every last ounce of strength I had burst out in a silent scream, a psychic wail meant for one person—Constantine. Instantly, we were connected, feeling, sharing, exchanging sensations. He, body pressed against a soft, yielding female form, froze mid-bite. I too stiffened, using the last of my energy to assault him with my far-less enviable situation—strangling, listless, helpless. He saw the darkened interior of the shop. He saw Patrice, triumphant. He heard the faint gargle of my deprived lungs. He felt the sting of a phone cord wrapped about his throat.

  Then the bond was severed! Entirely. Cut by Rasputin, who malevolently waited on the street. The vile progenitor, obviously the maestro orchestrating Patrice's attack, had contained every bit of emotional energy within my body, so that it had built to explosive proportions. He had contrived this scene to lure Constantine here, had held my power in check until I would instinctively, telepathically transmit panic and desperation.

  "It's done.” Patrice dropped her stranglehold. I flopped to the floor, coughing and sputtering, barely conscious.

  Snitch rasped from his vantage inside the door. “Are you certain he is on his way?"

  "Yes.” Patrice's mouth, although split and swollen, twisted with distaste. “I could almost feel their connection, like heat coursing off her body. He actually wants to save this juicy bag of bones."

  "All I want to do is rip her throat out,” Snitch grumbled, his lanky form still hunched and hidden within the shadowy entrance, his burden equally obscured. “She owes me for an eye."

  "Sorry, Snitch, that's not allowed. Now, get to work,” Patrice ordered him. “Constantine will be here very soon.” She gripped my arm, more than half dragging me through the doorway. Snitch, I hazily saw, had begun climbing the stairs to my apartment.

  Patrice pulled my near deadweight out onto the sidewalk where she threw me at the feet of her new master, Rasputin, who was surrounded by a small crew of lesser vampires. Donata, too, was there in all her black-haired, big-breasted, hate-filled glory. I lay curled on the pavement in a not-quite-fetal-position, afraid to look up at her. And even more afraid to look directly at Rasputin's gigantic hideous form. Try as I might though, I could still feel him. Massive. Evil. Hungry. He was a black unwholesome shadow that clung cobweb-like to me. I shivered uncontrollably.

  "So submissive. I like that in a Soulsmith.” His voice, as during our hideous encounter at the Constantinople, belied his utter repulsiveness. It was musically soothing. He reached out with his grotesquely nailed hands to grip my shoulders and haul me to my unsteady feet. He towered over me, seven feet and three hundred pounds worth of ravening undead. I cringed within his unbreakable grasp. There was no way to avoid looking into that bloated yellowy face with its deep, black, rheumy eye sockets and sparse wormy hair. “You won't be repulsed by me much longer. You will do anything for my touch, for my attentions. Be they pleasant or otherwise."

  A mighty stench secreted from him. Years of preying on mankind scented his diseased skin, poured from his foul mouth, permeated the air about him. He stank of an abattoir, a pit full of death, rot, and decay. I turned my head and bent back to gulp a clean breath. His odor, like his sharp grip digging into the tops of my shoulders, was inescapable. I strained and squirmed against his hold, causing blood to seep from the wound at my lower back. Rasputin knew the exact spot by sense of smell, I supposed. He caressed that open wound with one huge, monstrous hand which he then raised to his mouth. He sucked at the liquid with obvious delight.

  "Tasty.” It burned where he had touched me, like something toxic burrowed there. Patrice, obsequious, nearly bowing, lisped through her busted lip and bashed in nose. “All is progressing as you have willed, Master.” But it was to Donata that she slithered, placing herself squarely behind her mistress. With her graceful height but ruined visage, she jealously guarded the female progenitor, who wore an outrageously black-as-sin unitard. The pair gave me the heebie-jeebies!

  Rasputin's gigantic bulbous head swung upward to the second story of the De Facto Self Defense building, to my apartment. Although it caused Rasputin's nails to gouge deeper into me, I half twisted to also look in that direction. Snitch, I knew not why, had slunk upstairs. The large living area should have been dark. Instead, a vague orangish glow bled through the white curtains. Not long thereafter, Snitch crept from the shop, and he took up a post in the alley between De Facto Self Defense and the next-door bakery.

  "No! No! No!!” I half shouted, half sobbed, tugging uselessly against Rasputin's cruel grasp. Snitch had set my upstairs quarters afire. Rapidly, an inferno raged through my home, through my entire life. The long French door panels exploded outward and pelted down upon the pavement. Heat and smoke drifted on the air. Choking and coughing, I continued to fight Rasputin's hold. His talon-like fingers never eased, but bit more piercingly into my flesh.

  He laughed at my pitiful efforts. Against him, I was less than a gnat. “Come, children, we must get off the street.” Rasputin cocked his great misshapen lump of a head, listening to far off sounds. “Constantine is coming.” His watery eye holes glistened.

  Donata watched me intently with her malevolent dishwater brown eyes. “Careful of your human whore, Rasputin. She could ruin your ambush."

  Taking her words as my cue, I frantically stretched out my psyche to locate Constantine, but Rasputin jostled my entire body, shaking me like a child with a rattle. “If I let you warn him, it would spoil my plans. You, Soulsmith, must keep SILENT.” Silent. Silent. Silent. His command caromed around my mind.

  His words, his cursed voice, induced a hypnotic state, wakeful but unblinking, aware but detached. He slid me along beside him, farther down the street, against the inky shadowed side of the Parker and Bowles law office. There to wait and watch. All-the-while, every thought and feeling, breath and blink of mine, indeed, of all those gathered, was veiled by Rasputin's awful power. He even muted Donata, whose hatred of me dimmed enough to make her physical proximity bearable.

  Constantine, then, came into view. He sped down the roadway, almost a blur, a sleek speeding form with windblown coal black hair and equally dark silk shirt and trousers. With the precision of a camera shutter, I saw his every preternaturally accelerated stride, the swift pump of arms and legs, the inhuman fluidity of muscle and sinew, the incredible unflagging speed and grace. He ran this life or death race towards De Facto Self Defense where fire, unmistakable and terrifying, blazed through the upstairs interior. Yellow and red and orange flames showed there, clogged the cool night with smoke, poured heat into the air. A kernel of affection for Constantine wanted me to scream a warning. Only, because of Rasputin's dampening influence, I couldn't!

  With undiminished speed, Constantine launched himself, feet first, through the plate glass panes of the shop's window front. He crashed through in a traumatic concussive noise to land on the other side in a balanced crouch.

  Even in my muddled, hypnotic state, I registered that the son-of-bitch had been able to enter my home! Where was the excruciating pain? My ingenious ‘disinvite’ had obviously not worked! Which meant that he could have forced his way into my place—and into my bed—the other night. But he hadn't? That much-out-of-character fact was too hard to fathom. Because what Constantine wanted, Constantine took. Therefore the only thing stopping him the other night had been ... What? Conscience? Game-playing? Fear of the price for taking what wasn't willingly offered? Who knew? Certainly not me, and certainly not now. I was more-or-less in a stupor.

  All I knew for sure
was that he had come to my rescue, that he thought I was inside the shop, that he thought I was dying at the hands of another vampire. Under Rasputin's thrall, I pretty much ran on automatic pilot. In my half-conscious state, I more-or-less saw the flames that were destroying my home, heard the accompanying pops and cracks of stressed wood, glass, and metal, smelled the acrid pall of a roaring inferno, but emotionally I was distanced, almost uncomprehending. Nor could I mentally warn Constantine!

  Nevertheless, he warily uncurled from his crouched-over-squat as if sensing something was wrong. Too late, he had intuited a trap, or had perhaps reacted to my blanketed panic?

  Snitch sprang from hiding, both emboldened and empowered by his Master, reveling in his honored role as a progenitor's executioner. The item which he carried, which he hefted with deadly intent, was now visible, a glass bottle with a short, soaked, linen fuse. Which he had lit! The scrawny, eye-patched villain stood in the gaping window and flung the home-made bomb dead center of Constantine's chest. The Molotov cocktail splattered over his torso in a rush of greedy bright yellow-white flames.

  Constantine propelled himself from the shop's constrictive interior out onto the open street just before part of the upstairs apartment floor caved in with a hot smoky blast of embers. The exterior of the building remained while the bonfire ate away at the insides. Constantine stopped short, regal and defiant as the liquid fire rushed up his body. Behind him, the growing flames of De Facto Self Defense almost lit the entire block, eerily backlit Constantine. The pavement beneath him shimmered and shifted in the expanding firelight. Our catty-cornered hiding place across the road was revealed!