by Martha Woods
“How long did you stay with these people?” he demanded. She felt a wave of his barely controlled anger.
“Until I was sixteen. I knew I needed to be able to work, and old enough to learn how to drive. With the right makeup I could make myself look eighteen. Sometimes I would take waitress gigs. I was working the tables when I realized that I would make a lot more as a fortune teller.”
Kristian looked out the window at the perfect house. “Why are we here?”
“I haven’t been back here since the day I left. I always wanted to come back. Just to let them see they didn’t destroy me.”
* * *
As they approached the door, Tessa smiled. She didn’t tell Kristian that she wanted him to come along as insurance, just in case either of the Forresters thought they might not take seeing her very well. Feeling the waves of anger flowing off him like heat off an oven, she wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. She could imagine him throwing punches and snapping necks. Or maybe just drinking his fill from their throats. It was a morbid thought but she couldn’t help taking some small joy from it. She walked up to the porch with Kristian at her heels.
She rang the doorbell and waited. There were no sounds coming from within. The neighborhood was oddly quiet.
“Tessa,” he whispered. “Let me.”
The door opened beneath his hand.
“Breaking and entering?” she asked, taking a look around. “I don’t want to get arrested.”
“The door was open,” he replied frostily.
The television in the front was on, but the volume was very low. A heavy lump formed in Tessa’s stomach. Mrs. Forrester was one of those people who never allowed anything electric to run unattended, much less the television set. A lump lodged in Tessa’s throat as Kristian went directly for the kitchen.
Tessa could see past him to a pair of shoes and the rumpled hem of a house dress.
She tried to push past him, but he stood firm. Pushing against him was like walking into a brick wall.
“You don’t want to see it.”
“I have the right to see,” Tessa demanded, pounding his back.
“Very well,” Kristian said, stepping aside. “I warned you.”
Melissa Forrester’s head had a blackened hole in her temple. The wall was sprayed with blood and pieces of Mrs. Forrester. Something had blown through the woman’s skull, charring everything on its way through. Tessa held a hand over her mouth as she felt her stomach churn.
Jim Forrester must have died coming to her aid. He lay crumpled a few feet away from her, his face gone entirely. There was blood and gore and some gray-white substance that she didn’t want to contemplate.
Kristian pushed her gently backwards, so that they were back in the living room.
The front door opened, and a woman stepped inside. She brushed back her short, burgundy streaked hair and looked at them with wide, dark eyes. Her black combat boots stomped towards them, the leather of her jacket completely silent. She looked completely at odds with the quaint kitchen.
“Well,” she said, addressing Kristian, throwing her hands in the air. “You beat me here. So much for needing my services.”
“Who are you?” Tessa spat.
“I could ask you the same thing, honey,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“Tessa, this is Allison Harding. An old... friend of mine.”
“Call me Ally,” she replied caustically as she approached, flicking Tessa’s nose with the tip of her finger. “And let me guess, you must be the plaything of the month.”
Part Two
No one had to explain to Tessa just what Ally was—another vampire, for one thing, and Kristian’s ex-lover for another. How many of them did he have, she wondered. He was two hundred years old, she reminded herself. She listened to the pool of outright hateful things the woman thought of her. The woman was as jealous as they came. If not for the situation—the scene so near that made her stomach turn—she’d have given the bitch a piece of her mind.
“Tell me why you’re here again?” Tessa asked.
Ally turned her attention to Kristian, her voice clearly incredulous. “Do you really want me to explain to this human?”
“She is my friend. This was the home of her foster parents and considering that they have been murdered, anything you could tell us right now would be helpful.”
“I was tracking one of the Calder, and this is where the scent led me. I thought maybe she was just coming here to throw me off. I mean, why else would one of them come to a place like this? And speaking of you, missy, what are you? Are you one of the Calder’s contracts? Is there a demon somewhere under your skin?”
Tessa wasn’t aware that she had moved forward until she felt Kristian’s hands on her waist, pulling her backwards. Tessa had never wanted to punch someone so badly before. She didn’t know if it was the death around her or if it was the territorial feeling that made her clench her teeth.
“We should all regroup at the Beach House. You can debrief all of us there, Allison,” Kristian laid down his commands.
* * *
Tessa spent the drive back to the house in stunned silence. Finding her foster parents dead was the last thing she had expected. While no one particularly loved the Forresters, Tessa couldn’t imagine anyone doing something like that. The rest of the house was still undisturbed. It wasn’t a robbery. The vampires believed it had something to do with the Calder, and she was inclined to agree with them. Why the Calder would have hunted down her foster-parents was another question altogether. She kept looking out the window at the ocean, clasping her hands together so they wouldn’t shake. The Forresters had never been kind to her. She counted her years with them as the most difficult in her life, beating out her years at the institution, but she was still horrified that someone had killed them. In some ways, they were the only family she had left.
Veronica was at the door when they arrived at the beach house. She looked at her brother, sensing trouble. Her eyes fell on Tessa, and she felt the vampire’s worry. Shrugging away from them both, Tessa went to sit down in the living room. Ally trailed behind. Tessa only half listened as Kristian explained to his sister what they stumbled into.
Kristian stood behind the couch, not touching her but close enough that she could feel him. His presence calmed Tessa, despite the inner turmoil she sensed. Even though he didn’t say much it was good to know he was concerned. Veronica sat on the edge of one of the leather chairs. Tessa could feel how perplexed she was about the entire situation, but it was her anger that surprised Tessa. Who was she to care about Tessa’s foster parents.
Ally stood at the fireplace. She had everyone’s attention. After filling Veronica in on what happened, she gave them the information she had about the Calder.
“I wish I had more to tell you,” she began, opening her hands as if to show the nothing that she had. “I followed a group of three witches to Paris. After they landed there, they split up. One remained in France, but traveled to the south. The second one is currently in London. A third came to the States. She was back east as late as yesterday. There are two within the country that I know of. But she hasn’t gone to her sisters. This one has been crisscrossing the country for some months now. There isn’t any rhyme or reason to her movements as far as I can tell. I backed off her because it didn’t seem her movements had anything at all to do with any vampires we know of. Caution is good, but I don’t get in their way if it seems like they’re prepared to kill us.”
“You’re saying you lost the one who just came from Europe?” Veronica asked.
“If you want to put it that way, yes,” Ally replied with a sickening smirk.
It’s nice to see she can be just as much of a bitch to other people as she is to me, Tessa thought.
“I have two of my associates on the others.”
Tessa sat forward, fixing Ally with a serious look. “You say one had been all over the country. Do you know the last three states she was in?”
Ally rolled
them off the tip of her tongue. Tessa felt her skin grow cold as her temples started to throb.
“What is it?” Ally asked. Her face took on a semblance of concern. Or perhaps it was curiosity. With the roaring in Tessa’s head she suddenly couldn’t read the vampires clearly. The voices of others’ thoughts melted into a roar and she could only hear her own thoughts over the din. And barely those.
“Wyoming, Utah, Colorado,” Tessa repeated, looking to Kristian. “The last three states I’ve passed through.”
Ally crossed her arms. “Well, I’ll be damned. Who did you piss off?”
“What are you talking about?” Kristian demanded.
“We have a Calder traveling behind her. And yet nothing happens until you brought her here. It simply can’t be a coincidence. I don’t know why they killed her parents. Maybe to send a message, or to shake her up. One way or another, they want something from Miss Not So Normal. Who knows, maybe they want to harness that aura of hers. Either way, you’ve brought trouble into your own house—”
“Enough!” Kristian barked. “I won’t have you accusing her.”
Ally took a step forward. “Why are you so blind to this ruse? The girl could be a trap and you won’t consider it for even a moment.”
Tessa was about to shoot up from her seat when a pair of hands clamped down on her shoulders. Kristian’s thumb rubbed her collar bone. She was surprised how comforting the small touch was to her. Still, it couldn’t calm the storm that was brewing inside of her. Trouble really was hot on her heels. Despite the rough start, Kristian and his sister had been good to her. Was she inadvertently leading them to their demise?
“What’s our next plan, then?” Veronica asked. “To protect all of us?”
Tessa was caught off guard by Veronica’s declaration.
“I’m working on it.” Ally took out her cell phone, texted someone briefly, and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “I’ll send reinforcements for you. Meanwhile, I ask that you stay put until my people get here. You could try running again, but I am not convinced it would do anything other than put you in more danger.”
* * *
Kristian asked to speak with Ally alone before she left, casting a worried glance at Tessa. Tessa went to wash her face and have a moment alone to collect her thoughts. She checked out her reflection in the bathroom mirror. There had been a few tears on the way home, despite the fact she tried not to. Her eyes were red. She looked just as shocked and angry as she felt. The image of her foster parents’ dead bodies were still in her head, snapshots of the gore haunting her each time she closed her eyes. They weren’t good people by any measure, but what the Calder did to them, no one deserved. She was still trying to absorb the possibility that she was the target of the Calder. Being a freak was nothing new. Being one that anyone cared to pursue was another thing.
Tessa went into the kitchen for a bottle of cold water. She opened the fridge and when she closed it, found Veronica standing beside her in a space unoccupied only a moment before.
Tessa jumped. “I’m aware you can do that, there’s no need to show off,” she sniped.
“I’ll take that into consideration next time,” Veronica said. “Come with me. We should have a talk.”
Tessa raised an eyebrow in question, but followed Veronica to the patio in the back yard. A sweeping view of the ocean was visible from there. Once they were seated, Veronica pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You don’t smoke, do you?” she asked.
“No,” Tessa replied. “I could never afford the habit.”
“It’s probably better that way,” Veronica said as she lit up. “They kill you eventually. One of the benefits of being a vampire is you can abuse your body in all sorts of ways and it doesn’t matter. Kristian hates it, but a girl has got to have her vices. As immaculate as he likes his house kept, I wouldn’t dare risk the upholstery smelling like tobacco smoke.”
Tessa raised an eyebrow. “Good to know. But I’m sure that’s not what you brought me here to talk about.”
Veronica nodded. She tilted her head back and blew out smoke. She tapped a bit of ash off the tip. Tessa watched the ashes swirl away on the wind before she continued. Her emerald green eyes were wide and clear. She brushed back her light brown hair. She wondered if Veronica and her brother were blondes when they were children.
“I want you to know I like you, Tessa. You say what you think. And I can tell my brother cares about you. He hasn’t looked at anyone the way he does at you for many years. To be honest, not since Serena. How much did he tell you about her?”
“Not much,” Tessa admitted. “I could tell he didn’t want to get into it, so I didn’t push.”
“Good call,” Veronica said. “He doesn’t speak of her but his mourning for that woman has never fully ended.”
“Why is that?” Tessa asked. She was curious. Not to mention she was happy to discuss anything which didn’t reference the Calder and the new threat to her own life.
“The tie between a vampire and his maker is a complicated thing,” Veronica said carefully. “You know how you love your parents? Not when you’re a teenager, or even, say, an eight-year-old child who is old enough to be truly aware of the world and have a life separate from their families. Do you remember that pure, sort of unbridled adoration you had for your parents when you were maybe three or four years old? How they were your entire world?”
“I don’t know if I have solid memories of events from that time, but I do remember the feeling.”
“Okay. Add onto that the feeling you had for the first person you ever fell in love with. The way you were fiercely devoted to them and would die to protect them. Once you have the strength of those feelings combined, you have something resembling a shadow of the love one has for their maker.”
Tessa didn’t know what to say. “Okay.”
“Our parents died young, as many people did in those days. There was a bad strain of pneumonia going around and one winter and they both caught it,” Veronica continued. “I was thirteen years old, and Kristian was twenty. We were probably what was considered middle class by the standards of those times, but there were bills owed to everyone in town. My father ran a small restaurant, and Kristian was already working as an apprentice there. He took over. He worked day and night to keep the place open. He started selling baked goods in the morning, and closing up until evening for the dinner crowd. Very enterprising. It’s something my father never would have allowed, but it saved our business. We were able to keep a roof over our heads.
“When I was sixteen, I got married. Kristian had his dalliances I’m sure, but no one he was serious about. He was still working so much that he wouldn’t have had time or inclination for much else. I worried for him because my new husband wanted us to move to Boston, where his family owned land and a business. In those days, a woman had no say in such matters. By leaving town I was leaving him with no immediate family. Without a wife to care for him, my concern was he would work himself into an early grave.
“Communication between us was sparse, as you could imagine. I’d write letters and he would write me back but wouldn’t tell me everything. I could feel there was something wrong. I guess the same could be said on my end of things. My husband wanted a baby, which I seemed unable to give him. And when he got upset about it, he commonly used his fists to vent his frustration. It was okay for men to do that in those days.”
“I’m sorry,” Tessa breathed.
“Yes. Well, it was more than one lifetime ago. Anyway. I asked my husband if we could see Kristian for the holidays. We were always so close, but by that time we’d been apart for a handful of years and I needed to see him. I needed to know what was wrong.
“When I came home, what I found was not the Kristian I knew,” she said, her voice dropping deeper. Tessa could feel the sadness in her, along with anger and grief, other emotions which overlapped and blended together.
“My brother was in the house, alone, shutters drawn in the middle of the day. I thought
he was dying, he looked so sick: sallow skin, puffy eyes with bags beneath them. He was thinner than I’d ever seen him. He refused to let me open the windows. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I tried to feed him, but he couldn’t keep anything down. My husband said Kristian was probably not long for this world and we should go back home and leave him be. I was never more appalled by my husband.
“I told him he could go home, and when the crisis passed I would join him. He didn’t like it, but for once I made a demand he listened to. I don’t know what I intended to do, Tessa, but I knew I was never going back to that man, even if it meant peddling on the streets or becoming a whore.”
Veronica paused, ground her cigarette into the ground with the tip of her black, red bottomed heel, and continued.
“My first order of business was finding out what was really wrong with my brother. Since he wouldn’t tell me, I followed him out at night. He was going to see this woman, Serena Faye. He would spend the entire night with her and hurry home in the hour before dawn. There were all kinds of rumors about her, and none of them good. Most said she practiced voodoo. Others claimed she was something far worse, though no one dared to say what. Well,” she said with an ironic chuckle, “who is to say rumors aren’t right sometimes?”
“How long had he been going to Serena by the time you came back to town?” Tessa asked.
“Almost a year,” Veronica said. “One night he staggered through the door, covered in blood. Finally, he confessed everything to me—that he had basically been a slave to Serena over the past months, letting her feed from him. She used it to keep her under his control, made him beg for sex. He’d finally gotten wise to the fact that he was going to go the way of her other lovers, and he...he did what he had to do to live. But by then, Serena had pushed him to the edge of the abyss with her blood. All that was needed for him to complete the change was to feed.”
Veronica lit her second cigarette, and brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear. She seemed calmer. Her thoughts were running like a cool spring, creek. Tessa licked her lips, waiting for her to continue.
