by A. C. James
It had been a slow night except for a freebie trick to an off-duty cop in an unmarked vehicle. Then I managed twenty-five for manual from a date who couldn’t afford his usual. Stan, better known as Stanford Slim, wasn’t going to like hearing about the freebie. He gave enough kickbacks so nobody should hassle me. The air felt damp with the drizzle that spit on the litter-lined sidewalk at my feet. Rubbing the goose bumps on my arms, my lips began to tremble.
The cigarette between my shaking fingers had burned down to the filter. So I flicked it into the gutter. A black sedan started down the street in my direction. Sighing as it passed me, I looked down. Brake lights turned red and then the sedan reversed, stopping only a few feet past me. I looked up at the dark tinted windows of the car; a dark shade covered the license plate as well. With a lethargic stumble I moved up the sidewalk and stepped off the curb, leaning toward the window.
When the window rolled halfway down, I managed an almost toothless grin, leering at the driver. My teeth had decayed and some of my regulars weren’t so regular anymore. I’ll be damned. This better not be one of those stupid social workers. Some of the braver ones from a local non-profit group trawled for sex workers they wanted to get clean. One of them stopped me once. Dumb bitch wrote me off—called me a waste of time. So I spit in her ignorant face. I don’t need no one to save me, especially not some high and mighty bitch looking down her nose, passing judgments like she’s so much better.
This didn’t look like the same social worker, but my memory felt foggy. I couldn’t remember her sneering face. But it was unheard of to be picked up by a woman looking for a date. In this neighborhood I’d never pulled that kind of trick.
Spreading my index and middle fingers to form a V, I placed my fingers over my mouth and moved my tongue from side to side, gesturing obscenely. Then I held up five fingers to indicate fifty dollars. Gesturing instead of speaking my prices aloud, in case the woman driving turned out to be a cop, would be safer. Oh well, I charge forty for oral but I don’t do hoes. And this hoe looked like she could afford fifty. Stan wouldn’t give me any ice if all I brought back was twenty-five.
I couldn’t see her eyes.
The woman driving wore Oakley sunglasses despite the overcast sky. Her glasses covered most of her face, except for a cunning smile. It revealed pearl-white teeth that were almost too bright.
“Get in.”
She looked like money and I figured it would get me out of the cold. She leaned over and opened the door and I slid into the passenger seat. We drove until the woman pulled into a darkened alley. Its menacing length stood between two boarded-up row homes. The cold and uninviting stretch made me shiver, but it could have been the cold. Maybe I was just coming down.
The stale smell of urine and vermin that shuffled along the edges of the building went with the job description. And the rain that dripped down the graffiti-covered brick only added to the dank, musty smell that I recognized all too well. It’s funny. You never think you’ll get used to the smell of piss, but then you do. It’s amazing the things you can get used to.
“In the backseat,” the driver said.
I climbed into the backseat, obeying her gruff command. The driver rose out of the vehicle, opening the back door to sit next to me. She sneered before suddenly wrapping a hand around my neck. My windpipe crushed under the wringing weight of her hand. The woman slammed me into the back of the seat. Unable to make a sound, I watched in horror.
The woman smiled and lengthened her fangs. I could feel the prostitute’s shock and fear rise as she ran her tongue over the sharp points. The tremendous impossibility and terror of it all hit me as my buzz died. My low-cut shirt gave her easy access as she sank her fangs into my chest, and she began to drain my blood.
My heart beat erratically and I began to seize. A final image of my son flitted through my drug-slaved mind. Mamma, watch over him like you always has. I’m so sorry, baby boy. The loneliness, emptiness, self-loathing, and shame drifted away. Everything started to go fuzzy and numbness washed over me.
I could feel nothing. No one could touch me now.
The woman smiled, wiping the blood from her lips before kicking my lifeless body from the vehicle. It felt like I hovered above the alley, watching, disembodied from the pain below. My thoughts were confused and muddled with the disregarded remains that lay in the filth to tell a macabre tale that wouldn’t even register the attention it deserved. Her Oakley glasses turned up in my direction. “Hello, little one. Hello, Holly.”
“Holly!”
I felt someone shaking me.
“Holly, wake up.”
I startled and propped myself up on my elbows. Arie switched on the lamp sitting on the bedside table. A fine sheen of sweat covered my body.
“I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassed to disturb him with my nightmare.
“It’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping. I was reading a book downstairs. I heard you talking in your sleep, tossing and turning. I thought I should wake you.”
“Just a dream.”
Arie raised his eyebrow. A look of concern framed his face.
“My visions have been more intense lately. Sometimes it’s like I’m someone else. Usually it’s like watching television, but sometimes it’s muted. This feels very, very real.”
Arie crossed his arms. “But it’s not real. This is real. You and me—here in this loft.”
“I’m okay. It’s fine. I just need to get used to seeing things this way.”
“You’re safe with me.”
I nodded. The tenderness in his voice soothed me. “I’m not sure if Katarina has killed again or if it’s a vision from someone she already killed. But it’s another prostitute, I think.”
“Not surprising.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Maybe there’s some way I can find out more. Were there any identifying images in your dream that might help figuring out the location?”
“I’m not sure how I know it, but South Clark Street. There was a red star.”
“I’ll call Victoria later and have her look into it. Go back to sleep.” Arie touched my shoulder and then turned to walk back down stairs.
I grabbed his arm before he made it much farther from the bed. “Please stay.”
He looked down at me and I released his arm. Arie looked vulnerable, torn. And I wished Katarina wasn’t a part of his past and that I’d met him before she’d hooked her claws into him. He sighed before switching off the lamp and walked around the bed. I held my breath, expecting him to tuck the covers around me a little tighter, but hoping he’d stay.
Without pulling back the covers, he laid on top of the quilted spread. I slid back down under the covers and felt the comforting weight of his arm wrap around me. I melted into his chest pressing against my back. His breathing remained slow and steady, but somehow I knew he wasn’t sleeping.
“Thank you.”
“For?”
“Staying.”
“Holly, tell me why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you don’t give up every time I pull away. Wouldn’t it be easier to be with someone without such a complicated life, a complicated past…someone human?”
I flinched. I didn’t want to tell him how I really felt. “There was a boy.”
“Isn’t there always? What happened?”
“He’s gone.”
“Did he die?”
“No, but he’s dead to me. I loved him but I never told him.”
“Why?”
I closed my eyes, grateful for the dark. “His eyes wandered, and he couldn’t help but flirt with everyone. And I watched him beg for love but he never knew what that really meant.”
“Sounds like a masochist.”
I laughed. “Well, I don’t believe in soul-mates or any of that love at first sight bullshit. It’s either there or it’s not. When you’re eager to walk away instead of staying or fighting for what you want it’s not really love. He walked away too easy and a little
bit each day I realized I didn’t love him. Not really. I loved him in a childish way. I loved him in a whirlwind, teenage, swept-up sort of way that wasn’t love at all but like a drug. And I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”
Arie inhaled, and I couldn’t tell but it seemed like he might be holding his breath. The uncertainty hanging in the silence was deafening. I knew, in that silence, anything could happen, and held my own breath for what followed. If I spoke, whatever he intended to say would be gone.
“To fall asleep and to wake up beside a kind soul, a truly kind soul, is a rare thing. It defines love, and after thousands of years I still haven’t found myself next to someone whose flaws complement my own in the morning.”
I felt so much overwhelming sorrow and anger that Katarina had made him this way. I blamed her for him not connecting with anyone or letting anyone in. And I wanted to change that.
“You know, turtles can live to be over a hundred,” I said after a pause. “But just because they haven’t been hit crossing the road doesn’t make them wise. It just makes them damned lucky.”
Arie laughed. “What are you saying? You mean waking up next to a turtle is luck? Or I just haven’t been lucky enough to find the right turtle?”
“Well maybe not it’s not all luck. They have to know just when to cross the road. But even if you look both ways you might not realize the right moment when it gets there.”
I laughed at the absurdity of my poorly formed analogy. No wonder he couldn’t get what I was saying. I didn’t understand myself, as tired as I felt. Arie pulled me a little closer and I smiled in the darkness that covered my face like a veil, although with my back to him he couldn’t possibly see my face.
“If I’d never come to the Coffee Grind you’d be safe. You need to get some rest. And I need to find Katarina.”
“Yeah, I’d be safe and bored and still waiting for life to happen while dreaming of something better. I’m not afraid of crazy. I’m not afraid of Katarina. And you don’t know that I’d be safe when my aura has become such a beacon.”
“You should be afraid of her.”
The truth was that she scared the pants off me, but I didn’t want to admit it. “You forget I’ve seen crazy things my whole life. A psychopathic undead vampire is just another level of crazy. The dead don’t scare me. It’s the living that worries me.”
“She wasn’t always like that.”
“Like what…crazy? Or a bitch?”
Arie let out a harsh laugh. “Both.”
“You loved her.”
“Like a drug.” Arie sighed. “I’m sorry that I push you away.”
It was hard to reconcile this tender, broken man with the one who’d cuffed me and whipped me. But I suspected having a past like his would build a wall that he only let down in moments like this. “Don’t beat yourself up for it. Just buy yourself a turtle. It’d be the perfect pet for you because they live so long.”
Arie laughed. “You should get some sleep.”
“Arie, what you did for me… I didn’t know that I could feel that way. Pleasure, I mean.”
“Submitting to pain takes trust, and can take you to unexpected places.”
“Well I never knew it could be like that. I’ve never…not until I met you.”
He stroked my hair, his gentle touch was soothing. “Sleep.”
I found that every muscle in my body felt heavy and tired. Pressing my entire body into Arie’s, I luxuriated in the cold envelope of protection his arms provided. His arms were my world, just like he was quickly becoming. I desired him. I was falling in love with him. His tenderness touched me. And I wanted to submit to everything he had to offer. Right before falling asleep, I whispered words I knew were true even if he didn’t, “You don’t have to love me but you will.”
***
I woke up alone and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling. Part of me still couldn’t believe everything that had happened. But the things I wanted to try, that I wanted to learn, didn’t surprise me. They didn’t even give me pause. Not after the night I’d spent submissive to his will. Every muscle felt strained and knotted up, but I wouldn’t have traded the soreness for anything. In fact I wanted more, much more.
Although I didn’t expect Arie to be in bed with me when I woke up, it still hurt that he continued to sleep on the pull-out sofa downstairs. The sting across my heart felt worse than the bite of the riding crop. The sex was great. Better than great. It just wasn’t the only thing I wanted. But I’d never actually seen him sleep and wondered if he ever did. The pouring rain outside the window made me want to pull the covers over my head and stay there all day. I would have if Arie would stay in bed with me. Regardless of wanting to curl up, I needed to pick up my paycheck and work schedule for the following week. And finding Katarina was priority number one.
I stretched languidly across the sheets before crawling out of bed. Finding my pajama bottoms on the floor where I’d kicked them, I pulled them up my legs, feeling the full effect of the workout Arie had given me the night before. But the nightmare kept replaying through my mind. The victim’s addiction to self-destruction seemed more potent than the meth, and I would have felt sorry for her death if I hadn’t seen the pain she suffered in life.
Arie stood on the balcony watching the rain when I came downstairs. I’d already started to get used to where he kept things in the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of cereal. Sitting at the breakfast bar, I heard the door to the balcony open. Arie seated himself on the stool next to me.
“So you think the area in your dream was South Clark Street?”
Now that I thought about it I remembered the sign. That’s how I knew. “Yes. I saw a street sign, South Clark Street, and like I said there was a red star.”
“I know the area.”
“But then she got into a car with Katarina and I’m not sure where they went.”
“Victoria can help me track. I called her while you were still sleeping. I’ll take her with me. You stay here.”
“I can’t.”
Arie frowned. “You will do as I say.”
“I’ve already taken two days. I was lucky to have one off. But I have to get my paycheck and my schedule for next week.”
“I told you I can take care of it. I can pick up your check and dazzle him in regards to your schedule.”
“Dazzle him? No, that can’t be good for him. I had a migraine after our date and I know you pulled that on me. Marshall may have caused me the occasional migraine but I still wouldn’t wish that on him.”
“It would be safer if you stayed here.”
I couldn’t deny that Arie was right. But I hated the idea of hiding in fear, even if that was the smart thing to do. “I can’t hide out in your loft forever. Last night was fun and all, but outside the bedroom I’m not someone you can order around.”
Arie arched an eyebrow in amusement. “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound firm, but my confidence wavered. So I took another bite of cereal to cover my discomfort. “You can whip me senseless if you want to, but I’m still going to the Coffee Grind.”
“I could just tie you to the bedpost.”
“You’ll have to be more creative than that to keep me here. I’m very flexible and you’d be surprised at what I can get out of.”
“Oh, I can be very creative, Holly.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth.
I gulped. “Please, I’m not trying to be unreasonable, but I do need to get my paycheck. I appreciate your offer to pick it up but I just need to pretend for a while that there’s not a murderous vampire on the loose. I need something normal to distract me from all this.”
Arie sighed. “You make me want to introduce caning into our relationship, or at the very least a gag for your smart mouth.”
I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. My face turned crimson just thinking of all the wonderfully sexually degrading positions he could put me in while bound and gagged. It might not be a bad idea
. But if we ever messed around in the loft and I let out a scream his neighbors might take it the wrong way.
“Fine,” he said. He took a key out of his pocket and slid it across the breakfast bar toward me. “I had a spare made. Just be sure that you call me when you get back to the loft.”
“I will.” As if I have a choice.
CHAPTER 17
I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I drove Arie’s ostentatious gift over to the Coffee Grind. Stopped for a red light, I sipped my coffee from a Thermos. Mrs. Ellis always used to say, “It keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold. But how does it know?” Just thinking of her made me smile. Last time I had seen her had been Christmas, but I’d go down this summer for my birthday. The bitter warmth from my coffee and thinking of her comforted me when so many things in my life were changing.
The rain had downgraded to an annoying drizzle and a flash of gold appeared through the misty haze. A tacky blonde with big hair walked down the sidewalk up ahead. Her sleazy gold shirt reminded me of the 80s. That’s strange. She had the same ethereal face as the woman in the forest from my dream. Except this woman could have been Madonna’s trashier stepsister, only not as well-preserved.
She ducked under an awning and stepped into a shop. The sign above read: Rue’s Attic – Goddess & Goth, Thrift & Gift. The store must be new. I’d been down this street a zillion times but never saw this place before. Curiosity got the better of me, and when the light turned green, I pulled into an empty space a few doors down from the storefront. I pulled my suede flap coat around me to seal out the dampness. An electronic-sounding doorbell chimed when I entered the pungent shop.
The front of the store had stands with handmade soaps, aromatherapy oils, incense, jewelry, and statues. Heady incense mixed with the fragrance of the dried herbs that hung overhead. In the middle of the store stood a row of bookcases, back-to-back, with an aisle down the middle. Various books on goddess traditions lined the shelves. Next to the bookcases were two comfy-looking chairs on either side of a coffee table. A customer seated in one sipped a steaming beverage from a mug while turning the pages of a book with yellowing pages.
