by James Brock
“Not looking so good Ashford. Guess that came from your fall the other night. How far up do you think you were when I nailed you?”
“High enough that it nearly broke the left one. What did you do?” his voice was low and soft.
“Trade secret my friend. Now let’s talk business.” Sally walked over to the small dining table then reached out and hit the light switch. Ash had gotten up and followed us, knowing whatever was happening involved me and no good.
Pulling a sheaf of papers from a pocket in the stupid cloak she wore (well it was and had she whipped something like it up for Project Runway they would have kicked her off immediately) Sally spread the paperwork out on the table.
“This,” she said, tapping a red nail against the first document, “is your speech of regret you will give saying that you are stepping down from Conner due to your health. The way you look right now no one will question it. This,” she said with a stab at the next document, “is your assignment of all rights and duties of Conner to me.”
“She thinks she’s gonna become president by doing this,” I said flatly, Sally yanked hard on the handcuff then brought her free hand over to my face and slapped me.
“Ow, hey!” I managed in protest as Ash lunged forward to grab her, Sally pressing a nail against the side of my neck. “Don’t sign it Ash! She’s gonna kill me anyway!”
“We’ve come a long way together Ash,” her voice was calm and smooth as she still held me firm. “Just sign the papers and I’ll let your little friend go.”
“You hurt him and…...,”Ash sputtered as he grabbed a pen, scrawling his signature out.
“Oh Ash! I’m a woman of honor! This gives me just about the right amount of time to begin funneling funds from Connor to my campaign war chest off shore. If you and I have learned nothing over these centuries it is that you can buy anything but integrity-but your money will do that for me!” Sally cackled as Ash signed over the foundation.
“Let him go now,” Ash’s voice was low and deadly.
“Let him go now,” Sally growled back with a smirk while scooping up the papers and stuffing them into her cape again. “Gotta learn some trust, Ash. Now I’m going to take Carter here back down stairs and let you get ready to go make that speech. Once it’s done we’ll all gather at the river or some clever thing like that and I will let him go and all will be right with the world. My world at least.”
Things happened fast after that. Sally shoved me toward the door, Ash grabbed at her free arm and Ty came crashing through, well the curtains actually. Ash had left the balcony doorway open and in swept Ty. The gauzy drapery swirling around him gave him a dashing superhero look. Until he tangled one of his long leg’s in the drapery and fell flat on his face. Some monster he was, but I was as happy to see him safe and there as if Uncle himself had come through the doorway.
While we were considering spectacle of Ty trying to get up the cabin door burst open and Laura Sue entered, gun blazing.
Chapter Ten
“Stop it you idiot, STOP! ST….,” before Sally could get that second STOP! out a bullet had ripped through her free hand.
“SHIT!”
If only CNN had been able to pick that up. Candidate gutter mouth.
“HE GOT AWAY!” Laura Sue screamed while squeezing a second round off, this one creasing the folds of material around drapery Ty was finally untangled from.
“STOP IT YOU VILE CREATURE!” Sally screamed, slashing at the air toward the belle of this gun brawl. Which of course jerked me halfway across the room with the use of her superwoman like strength. Another shot rang out, the bullet tearing through Ty’s upper arm. Which did not sit well with him.
“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” he roared, pushing himself up off the floor and charging Laura as Sally spun me in against her body and cat like un sheathed her long nails against my neck.
“I’ll RIP HIS NECK OUT!” Sally screeched-through all of this Ash stood staring at the scene being played out as another bullet fired. By then I wasn’t certain if Sally was yelling at Laura Sue or Ty.
It didn’t matter at that point because Laura Sue had aimed the gun at ME and pulled the trigger. The gun fired once, twice, three times-the first two scattered to the wall and a mirror. The third one Laura Sue sent my way straight and true, catching me in the upper left shoulder. It felt I had been hit by a teeny tiny freight train and the world went black, so this next part is what I was told by Ash and Ty. But I can tell you this, the way that girl handled her gun certainly made her as Vice Presidential material as some other gun totin’ VP’s.
While I was blacked out (which went on for a long time, btw) I went down, almost yanking Sally over, Ash lunged at her while Ty put a hand up flat only to have another bullet tear through the center of it as he charged Laura Sue.
Her attention off by just a split fraction of time allowed Ty time to do what he needed to, which was to lift an antique double sided Roman blade from next to the bed and plunge it fully through Sally, cutting so close the blade skinned alone my side as she made a gasp and clutched at me tighter. The huge knife was always within arm’s reach of Ash any time we travelled. I thought it a silly custom to carry it but this time was very glad of its positioning. Back in his days in the empire he had learned to keep his friends close, his enemies and weapon’s even closer. The sharply honed blade within reach had saved him on many occasion. It now saved me.
Leaving me to be held by Sally, Ty grabbed Laura Sue, plunging his teeth into her neck he took a few long draughts of her blood then shoved her over toward Ash, who had collapsed back onto the bed. The body of Sally finally loosened its grip and I stepped out of her grasp.
“Finish her, you need it,” Ty said to Ash of Laura Sue, backhanding the blood from around his mouth and dropping to the floor. He popped Sally’s hand off at the wrist and slipped off the handcuff-tearing the metal pieces apart he cradled me, smoothing his hand down over the bullet wound on my shoulder while howling as if he were feral. Which he is. Without breaking a sweat he tore the metal cuff from my wrist.
“I can’t lose him Ash, Nooooooooooo!” Ty screeched, the first tears he had formed in centuries filled the corners of his eyes, trailing down over his smooth white cheeks.
Ash finished draining Laura Sue’s body and stood, grabbing Ty by the shoulder and squeezing it as he moved on out to the balcony.
“Let’s go,” he said quietly and unbuttoning his shirt, and slipping it off. He knew the morning sun would reduce Sally to nothing but ashes. The remains of Laura Sue, the small bag of skin and suit of garish clothing, would go un noticed as just the trash she was.
Ash unfurled his wings, the wide span crossing into the night and rippling in the breeze. The older ‘pire bent and let Ty settle in on his back, Ty pulled me up close to him with his palm smashed against my wound. The blood was already clotting by the time Ash flapped a few times then let his feet rise above the deck and let our combined weight settle in on his back.
I came to for seconds about then; I remember lifting off the deck, feeling the dampness of Ty’s tears and the warmth of his palm against my chest.
“I lost him. I won’t lose you,” he whispered, softly kissing my cheek as we sailed on though the black night sky, the night air caressing our bodies. I was in too much physical pain to even be aware of it but hadn’t felt so safe and secure since Uncle last held me.
I woke in my own bed and for a few seconds thought I had dreamed everything. And I mean everything, Uncle dying, the vamps (including the run through one) and that I had just had a long, long nightmare. Then I moved a fraction and my shoulder jumped like it was on fucking fire. I yelped but even that did not wake Marta, who sat opposite the bed, her long lush hair usually brushed up and every strand in place, down around her shoulders. She was a very beautiful woman, her skin was smooth and soft. She had spent her whole life taking care of others, well, Uncle and me, I loved her and was glad she was the first person I saw after what I had been through. I wouldn’t have kicked seein
g Ash to the curb but was glad Marta was there. The only thing that would have made the scene complete would have been if Ty had been IN the bed with me. But the angle of the sunbeam streaming in through the tall French doors off my balcony (sorry, still rich) which assured he would not be around for a while. I hoped they were as safe as I felt but I didn’t want to wake Marta.
It was nice to in my bed, in my room surrounded by the familiar; the chipped but still full Tiffany coin bank that had been on my dresser as long as I could remember, the little Picasso on the far wall where it had always been, the Jeff Koons suit of armor in the corner given to me for my twelfth birthday by the artist himelf. We called him “Hank”, full size to scale he stood silent in the corner, his double edge sword tilted out front of himself as always. Feeling safe I closed my eyes again, remembering Ty’s whispered words. I was alive (a little broken right now but I’d heal), Ty was dead. Could we make a relationship work? I sure as hell wanted to try. When I opened my eyes again Marta was looking at me.
“Hi,” I said. The painkillers had given everything a soft edge. From the bulk of the bandage on my shoulder I knew I’d be in a fuck wad a of pain later.
“They are safe.” She said. I started to respond when she lifted her hand in the international stop sign, I gave her a grin.
“How long have you known?”
“Always.”
“Can’t keep anything from you,” a smile crossed her lips.
“How long have I been out.”
“Several days.”
“And you’ve been here the whole time.”
She just shrugged with a smile.
“I love you, Carter.”
“I love you too, Marta.”
“There is something you need to know,” she began.
My heart started to race and I hoped I was still dreaming, even to the point of closing my eyes. I knew she was not a vampire because when Marta wasn’t cooking or cleaning or directing a branch of the CIA (for all I knew) out of our kitchen she spent hours harvesting a garden that would have put a farmer in Iowa to shame. I knew there was a whole realm out there who moved around the edge of the living world and now after having gone through, well let’s just say a unique life, I was about to get another blast from the Cosmic News.
“I am your mother.”
Luke Skywalker was less surprised when Darth Vader uttered HIS famous confession. I couldn’t even speak. Had she told me she was a robot, a zombie, a ghost-none of those declarations would have surprised me as much as this.
“Huh?” I have a DEGREE yet this was my response. Shot, witness to a brutal stabbing of a vampire set on world domination and the draining or her syrupy sappy assistant; flown across the open ocean by a vampire with a less than full tank of blood-all those things had come to make near perfect sense in my world.
But this.
Standing Marta used her hands to smooth her hair back into its usual place and moved to the bed, she fussed over a tray on the side table, arranging pill bottles then picked one up and tapped several into her palm. Swinging her hand over to me she brought a glass with a straw in it to my lips. I washed the pills down and looked at her, realizing that the nose I looked at every day in the mirror was her nose indeed.
“I was young,” she began, “and not suited to be a mother.”
“I think you’ve done a hell of a job.” I managed.
“Your Uncle, he was the parent. I cook a few carrots and make you eat them.”
“And didn’t let me get eaten by vampires and never let me leave the house in wet socks and the billion other things a mother does.” I countered.
“I found an agency who found a family and right after I gave birth you went to live with them,” her voice was still strong but Marta’s story telling had slowed way, way down.
“Okaaaaaayyyy….,” I said, urging her along.
“Then there was the accident. And you went to live with your father.”
WHOA AND NELLY. Now this was just too FUCKING much!
“Father? No, Uncle,”
Marta leaned in and stroked her fingers through my hair and smiled.
“These things happen. We were young, one night we had a little too much fun and I promise you we neither one regretted it for one second. He was a wonderful man.”
All of this was being said in her thick Prussian accent but I just can’t bring myself to give you the tender and touching conversation crammed full of her ‘zi’s and ‘zat’s.
“The agency contacted me to do a re adoption, I talked to your father and we agreed to raise you as friends. Then came the insurance money and, well, here we are.”
There was a moment of silence and I half expected her to dust her hands together at that point and say she had pot pies in the oven she had to tend and now that we’d had the discussion it was a closed matter and on we’d go.
“Wow,” was yet another of my oh so articulate responses. When it hit me how close I had come to never having known this information.
“You told me because you thought I was gonna die.”
Marta smiled again, weakly and reached out to stroke my hair again. I flinched away. She hadn’t even leaned in to hug me.
“I’m sorry.”
I’d spent my life having my world rocked; this one was the tipping point.
“Get out,” I said, quietly at first, the louder, “Out, GET OUT!” sitting up I felt the sting of stitches pulling in my shoulder but that didn’t stop me. “OUT!” Marta’s face fell but I didn’t care, I was pissed that she had to wait to nearly lose me to tell me this; pissed at Uncle who had been my FATHER for fucks sake, who had kept this from me. Hey, trust me, I was an “adopted” kid and like many adopted kids wanted the 411 on who had parented me and yeah, I was grateful that Marta had given me up if she could not have cared for me but this was a boat load of stuff to have dropped on me right then.
“And you are so fucking FIRED!” I shouted at her back as she moved out of the doorway, not turning or responding. What did I care. She had not only given me up but had spent my entire life deceiving me so I felt perfectly justified in my bad boy behavior. Uncle would have been so disappointed but fuck his dead soul on THAT front. I mean you just don’t KEEP this kind of information from someone. Ok, I mean I could understand the Marta as a Housekeeper scenario; I could even understand Uncle as my father (although I worked at pushing CERTAIN images OUT of my mind if you understand what I am saying) but when I realized that I could have died without knowing all of that.
I knew kids with real, normal lives. Dads and Moms and siblings and grandparents and family vacations to Disneyland (when Uncle took me they closed the fucker down and twenty five or thirty of my friends and me had the run of the place, sure it was ideal but a time or two it would have been nice to have been there during the day with crowds of other people-we weren’t royalty) and what to my jaded-at-a-young age eyes seemed the ideal of reality rather than the rarified place we lived in.
Now my mother was my housekeeper, my gay Uncle my father; I was in love with a (HOT!) old vampire-my best friend and mentor was a vampire as well. And then there was the stuff on the ship-and, well I was so fucking tired. And the pills were RIGHT there; Uncle had hooked us up with the BEST always, so without further adieu to the Liars and Ladies and Gentlemen and Drag Queens and Vampires and whatever other creatures of the night who had populated my world all this time I assembly line started emptying the bottles down my throat. An army of pills marching down my windpipe-oh I knew I was giving up the good with what I was currently perceiving as bad; the fact that I had helped (in a tiny way but still) save the world from Sally and Laura Sue (who would have re done the Oval office in sunny yellow ruffles), my newly found mother, who I loved as Marta so could only imagine how I would feel about her as “Mom”; Ash, Ty, cheeseburgers and blond guys with big biceps. I was giving up licorice and baby ducks and the smell of flowers on a sunny day.
I WAS SHOWING THEM ALL! They wouldn’t have Carter to lie to and scare let fall
in love and not know if you CAN be in love with because you are un dead.
I hoped the pills were fatal because I sure as shit couldn’t sort it out, I’d reached the end of the crazy train ride that was my life and the thought of eternal blackness seemed like nothing but so much bliss.
“YOU DUMB FUCK!” were the words I woke to. Ty, inches from my face. A kiss, hug or even Hi might have been more in line. I looked around the room, Ash stood by the window, his back to me. I was flat on the floor next to the bed, a huge pool of my own sick next to me. My stomach had been manually pumped by the vamps. “Not that you deserve it but lift your head.” I did only to have my mouth flooded with water from a plastic bottle he held.
“YOU are going to clean this shit up, too,” Ty snarled. “You have the GIFT of life and then do this shit!” now this Ty did scare me, he was trembling in fact. “I CRIED over your dumb ass and we come in to find this bullshit!” lowering my head back down he rose and he stepped away from the bed.
What a jolly holiday this had all been!
“Ash, “I said weakly.
“He’s right Carter. We’d give anything to give what you have.”
“You don’t understand Ash!” I cried, my stomach was roiling, head pounding. I didn’t know what or how much I had taken but it was not pleasant.
“Yes Carter, we do. Marta told you she is your mother and that your Uncle was your father and you got angry enough to send her away.”
“You dumb FUCK!” this from Ty again.
Turning away from the window Ash came toward the bed. “Ty, stop,” he commanded, “this is all a lot to digest Carter. I know that. Ty is having some trouble with it but I know. Give him some time.”
“Hey did you just accept being a vampire?” I snarled.
“Like I had a choice!” Ty shot back
I just looked at Ash. Giving me a half smile the old vampire rose and swiped a hand over my cheeks. Ty stormed from the room, slamming the double doorway leading to the hallway open and sweeping into it.
