by J. Thorn
To quote one of my heroes, Joan Rivers, “Can we talk?” I bet if you are reading this…or even more accurately…still reading this book, then you are the kind of person who watches South Park and wishes you’d have thought to make the same observations about whatever or whoever they are making fun of currently. More accurately, you wish you could say some of it in public without having the locals show up with torches and pitchforks.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a line. But most people don’t even get close enough to see the line these days. I was with some friends at lunch one day and one of the girls said something was “totally gay.” Now from the reaction of one of the other ladies sitting at the table, you would have thought that the “N-word” had been used. (Yes, that is a line I will not cross. The Black community and Eminem can say what they like…but I will take a pass on that one.)
“Ava!” Rosanna yelled.
Damn, I was doing it again, wasn’t I?
“Did you hear anything that I just said?”
I gave a sheepish shake of the head. Bad Ava…that is a very bad Ava.
“I said that it is a law in the supernatural community. Each of us, for some reason or another has issues with the sun. That is considered the equivalent of the nuclear option. Anybody who might consider using it knows that supernaturals from around the world would hunt them down and kill them. Enemies would set aside their differences to kill whoever would consider using the sun as a weapon.”
“Wait, so how are witches bothered by the sun?” I knew for a fact that it burned my skin instantly. I also knew that it was death to a vampire, but what could it possibly do to a witch?
“If we are exposed to the sun for a period of four hours, it erases our power,” Rosanna said after a brief pause. I think she was weighing the trust level. She was about to expose a serious weakness. In the end, I imagine that she knew I would find out one way or the other.
“Seems to me like a simple burning at the stake would be much quicker.” I really do have that problem of speaking before thinking. I clamped my mouth shut and dared to risk a look at Rosanna. She was smiling! WTF?
“You are obviously referring to the old stories about Salem and the trials.”
I nodded. I was a little surprised that she wasn’t fuming. I mean, that would be like cracking slavery jokes with the head of the NAACP or Spike Lee.
“Do you think that a human would have stood a chance had they been dealing with any real witches?” She had a point. “A real witch would have known what was coming and considering the primitive times that this took place, it would have been nothing for her to wipe out the entire town.”
“You always say her…like as in one. What about covens?” I asked. I figured since she was so full of information, and obviously not shy about sharing, I should ask whatever came to mind. You never know when that information will come in handy.
“Covens!” Rosanna laughed. If she would have been drinking something, it would have shot out her nose. “Covens are silly little human constructs. The thing about mortals is that they seek acceptance. Even when they are trying to seem like they are on the fringe and unique, they always tend to surround themselves with likeminded individuals.”
“So you witches don’t gather and perform rituals while dancing naked under the light of the moon.”
“Would you want somebody watching you dance naked?” she asked. “Especially another woman?”
“Good point,” I agreed.
“But we have strayed well off the subject of The Queen of the Zombies,” Rosanna sighed.
“And apparently out of town,” I added.
I looked around and realized that we had driven out into the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but trees and more trees surrounding us.
I turned us around and headed back to town. Rosanna was silent as I drove. I imagine that she was afraid to say anything. For as grouchy as she got about me asking too many questions, she was certainly a fountain of information. That girl could talk. I decided to test something.
“So what did losing your familiar do to you? Did it hurt?”
“I was powerless for almost a month. It is like an illness. And then, once I recovered, I had to summon a new one and then create the bond from scratch.”
“But I thought you said the other one came back?”
“I was forced to put her down. She was no longer an open channel for my magic.”
13
Rainbow in the Dark
Just as I was re-entering Estacada, a weird “flash” lit up the sky. I put flash in quotes because I doubt it was actually visible to humans. I say this since we were driving past a few when the entire sky turned an ugly purple for about two seconds and then went back to normal and none of them so much as even glanced up.
“Interesting,” Rosanna murmured.
Then she pulled this little bag out and started digging through it. I knew it was a special bag when she pulled out a shotgun and a half dozen bottles that I at first thought were wine. You know those bottles that come with the wicker basket woven around the bottom? You usually get them in Italian places. You always take the bottle home and then use it for a candle holder. Now you know the ones I’m talking about, don’t you?
“What was that?” Leave it to me to ask the super-obvious question.
“I believe that was a message for you,” Rosanna continued to dig through her bag. I almost expected her to climb inside the damn thing.
“It was a message?”
“Somebody is in danger and needs you desperately if I read it correctly.”
Now I was really curious. There is not really anybody who knows me, much less one that would call me for help in any case.
Rosanna pulled out these weird goggles and slipped them on. She stuck her hand out the window and looked up. Then she started whispering a bunch of stuff that I am pretty sure was Latin.
“Oh yeah, it’s for you alright.”
“Does it say who it is from?”
“No, nothing like that,” Rosanna said as she took off her goggles and tossed them back into the bag. “But whoever it is has an urgent need for you to help them right away.”
“Where do I go? Does it at least say that?”
“Messages like this only come from graveyards.”
“Swell.”
Rosanna had to direct me to the graveyard. However, once we were just a few blocks away, she had me stop the car.
“This is where I get out, Ava.”
“But what if I need your help?”
She laughed! I didn’t see what was so damn funny. I waited for a moment, thinking that once she was done with her laughter, she would respond to my question. Instead, she simply kept laughing as she walked away.
I pulled up to the graveyard and just sat in my car. For some reason, my precious Corvette was not bringing me any comfort. I thumbed through a few songs until I came to the song Suite Sister Mary. I may piss a few people off, but those of you who have come to know me will already realize that I don’t give a rat’s puckered patootie. I think that the Operation: Mindcrime album rivals Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And as far as an in depth story, it isn’t even close.
This particular song is one that I used to like to listen to when I was in a funk. For one, Geoff Tate is at his multi-octave register best in this baby. But there is so much passion in this song. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I highly recommend that you seek it out and give it a listen.
Something told me that it was about to get intense and that whoever called was doing so because of Adrianna. My fingers and toes were tingling and I had this new sensation in my head that I could not identify.
For those of you who were wishing that I would have saved us all the trouble and knocked off The Queen of the Zombies way back at Voodoo Doughnut, I was suddenly seeing your point of view. Drama and exciting tension be damned…I was about to go head-to-head with the individual responsible for wiping out about half of the population a few centuries ago. I was way o
ut of my league on this one.
“Ava!” a familiar voice called.
If I would have moved my head much quicker, I might have snapped my own neck. Never in my life have I been simultaneously so happy and so worried in my life.
“Lisa!” I threw open my car door, climbed out, and loped to the huge arched gate that would open to the graveyard if the place were actually open.
I skidded to a stop. Having lived with her for a while, I was very familiar with Lisa’s scent. This was Lisa, of that I had no doubt, but she had no scent. I sniffed the air again just to be sure. Nope, not a thing was coming to me from her. That was all it took to finish my fingers and toes.
“Whoa!” Lisa exclaimed, taking a step back. “It’s me. Don’t get crazy here.”
“How come I can’t smell you?”
“You can’t what?” Lisa sounded confused.
“You know about my sense of smell…or at least Lisa knows about it.” I was suddenly very wary of the person standing before me. She looked exactly like Lisa, but smell is a sense that many shrinks say create the most lasting images and memories.
For me, a ghoul, smell is huge. I was suddenly struck by the peculiar rituals that all dogs go through when they met each other. You know what I’m talking about. Yeah…that whole butt sniffing thing.
I could be robbed of all my senses as long as I had smell and still function pretty damn good. I could pick Lisa out in a store on Black Friday if that gives you any idea. That’s not bragging. I actually had to do that to find her this past day after Thanksgiving. Actually, it was Shameful Thursday. We couldn’t wait to shop and went out to a few of the sales that kicked off on Thanksgiving Day at 8PM.
I am embarrassed to say that not only did I go, but if I can save that kind of money on a 70-inch, HD, 3D television…then you poor little retail clones are screwed.
Sure, I saw all the people bitching and moaning about the “poor Walmart workers” and such. If you are working at Walmart, that day on the clock did not come as a surprise. And besides, I saw a great post that shut down a lot of the boo hoo crybabies. It was a guy in full combat gear in some horrific Middle East shit hole. It basically said something like “Walmart employees have to work at 8PM on Thanksgiving?! So.” Of course it doesn’t really get the justice it deserves when I share it here minus the pictures…and the two hundred-plus post thread where all the people are bitching.
“Same old Ava,” Lisa laughed. Or at least the girl that sure looked a lot like Lisa did.
“What?”
“I asked you the same question four times and you just stood there with a blank expression on your face.”
Dammit!
“Okay, what was your question?” I shot back.
“I asked if you remembered when Morgan and I whispered a little something just before I left?”
“How could I forget? You just packed up and walked out of our house right after.”
“Yes,” Lisa agreed. “But I left with a purpose.”
I kept my mouth shut. Seriously, the only thing coming to mind was dripping with sarcasm and nastiness. If I said it and this was really Lisa and she was trying to come back to me or whatever, then opening my big mouth was a bad idea.
“Morgan said that I could choose a number of paths that would lessen the amount of danger that I ended up being in when we went out into these crazy situations together. She said that it was obvious that I cared about you a great deal, and that I would eventually get myself killed if I kept it up.”
A number of scenarios flashed through my mind. The worst being that she went to Belinda’s and became a vampire. I really did not like that idea. I would feel like it was all my fault. Actually, I am pretty sure it is anyways.
“And so what exactly did you do?” I tried to keep a lid on my emotions, but it wasn’t working. “And what was it that you could whisper back and forth with Morgan that you felt you needed to keep secret from me?”
When you got down to it, there I was being just plain old selfish Ava. She was making some sort of life-changing decision, and I wanted to know why she was keeping secrets from me. I could feel guilty about that later; right now I just wanted answers.
“She said that if I was going to remain a part of your life, I needed to take some steps to ensure my own safety. She said that you would never forgive yourself if something happened to me, and that despite the fact that it was my choice and my own free will to stay with you and go on these…adventures…that it was irresponsible of me to remain in danger. She said that if something happened to me, you might very well become a serious danger to yourself and everybody else out of feelings of misery and self-pity.”
I couldn’t argue with her logic.
“So I was given a few choices that she felt might interest me.”
This is where my blood would run cold…if it actually ran. I was curious, but I was also terrified as to what those ‘choices’ might include.
“Just tell me that you did not become a vampire.” For some reason, that was the worst possible choice she could make. Don’t ask me why, but my mind was so fixated on that one thing that I could not even fathom that there might be other choices.
“Morgan says that I have some minor psychic talents,” Lisa announced.
“So what…you are going to train with her and take over your own territory?” That might be almost as bad. I could not imagine Lisa sporting Morgan’s attitude.
“No…I said that I have some minor talents. So I could actually train with the Templars.”
That statement just seemed to hang in the air. I know that seems a bit cliché, but I was struck dumb. I had nothing to say. Probably the biggest reason had to do with the fact that I had not ever actually met a Templar. I didn’t really know what they did. I did seem to recall that they never give the impression that they are on the side of good in any of the movies. But what did movies know? How many ghouls can you name that are not mindless monsters?
“And what would that mean? How would that keep you safe?” I asked what I considered to be the most obvious question.
“The Templars are trained defenders. They learn all the latest combat techniques.”
“So you would be like some sort of bad ass…like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill?”
“Yeah, but even better. I would learn all this really cool hand-to-hand combat stuff.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you have no scent. Unless you—”
“I already met with the Guardian of the West,” Lisa blurted. “He talked with me for a while and then had me do a few tests. Things like stand still for hours and then some freaky stuff with a series of pretty gross pictures where I was supposed to look and then a few hours later I had recite everything that I remembered about a particular scene. I guess I did okay, because I have been invited to attend the first stage of training. If I pass I can continue and eventually become an actual Templar. But I had to accept the Initiate’s Ring.”
She flashed her hand and I saw what looked like nothing more than a regular old white gold band. You know the type that people buy when they want to get married and can’t afford much beyond next month’s rent.
“And am I correct to assume that this ring has some sort of magic property?”
“It halts my aging process. If I remain a Templar, I will eventually receive a much nicer ring that looks fancy, but really just does the same thing as this one.”
“So then why did you feel the need to send me up a distress signal? You don’t think that this is something that we could talk about at home?”
“But I didn’t send you any distress signal.”
Almost on cue, a scream pierced the air from somewhere deeper inside the cemetery. The only thing that I could tell for certain was that it was a female.
“I should probably check on that.” I tried my best to walk towards the entry gate—which also meant walking past Lisa—without looking like I was bothered. After all, she was talking about taking on something that had nothing to do with m
e. I guess I always expected her to simply be my sidekick. I guess that was the problem. If she was going to stay with me, then her mortality was her biggest liability.
As I passed her, Lisa took my hand. Even though my fingernails were on full alert, she didn’t even flinch. And then I noticed…she didn’t flinch! Lisa always had a problem with touching me. Do I need to remind you that when you touch a real person, they are warm? My skin was cool to the touch. After all, I am a ghoul.
“I’ll come with you,” she said with a smile.
“So you take a few tests and get a ring, and now you are some sort of ass-kicking super hero?”
“Nope, but you have kept me safe so far. Unless something has changed, I should be fine.”
Another one of those odd flashes lit up the sky. This one was almost blinding. I must have ducked instinctively.
“Are you okay, Ava?” Lisa asked.
“You didn’t see that?”
“See what?”
“That crazy flash that just lit up the entire sky with ugly swirls of purple!”
“Sorry, I didn’t see a thing.”
“Well then, if you are coming with me, grab my bag from the car and let’s go see what this is all about.”
“Something tells me that I could eventually be the Grand Templar and I will still be carrying your bag,” Lisa grumbled.
Glad to see that some things hadn’t changed.
14
Unchained
We were weaving through the stones when another scream came. This one was much weaker. The only good thing about it was that it gave us a better direction.
So let me ask a question. Why do they always want to build graveyards on hills and slopes? Don’t they know that monsters and evil villains always hide on the other side of those things?
We reached the top of the tree-dotted mound and found the source of the distress call that had brought me here. Laid out on one of the big tombs was a young girl. Only, it was already very clear that she was no ordinary human girl. The big give away? Her eyes were glowing a bright blue.
