He sauntered down the sidewalk with his tail held high, so I followed.
I had no idea where I was.
The sky was pitch black. Despite the city lights, a bright star—or maybe a planet—twinkled just below the moon. An airplane’s lights streaked across the sky. Nearby, the loud razzing thump of a car stereo’s bass line reverberated down the street.
I thought I might be in Central neighborhood in Minneapolis because the house I’d left was a three-story Victorian, much like its neighbor. Both were grand old Painted Ladies in need of a bit of care. Remains of bright paint peeled on dormers and missing shingles dotted sloped roofs. The snow-covered yards were small and close together. I ran my hand along the top of an industrial-strength chain-link fence that surrounded another Victorian in slightly better condition. A rainbow flag glowed in the soft yellow of a porch light.
Hero scampered quickly ahead on four feet; my lurching pace couldn’t match his and I fell behind. Every time I thought I’d lost track of him, I’d see him flopped down on someone’s walkway, his thin, black stomach stretched out as though he were a prince waiting for someone to tend to his every need. He seemed to expect me to stop and pat his tummy, so I took a breather to do as he wished.
I listened for the sound of the guys out looking for me, but everything was quiet. Well, “city quiet,” that is. Not far away, I thought I could hear the hum of vehicles on a highway. A car with a failing muffler sputtered noisily.
Tall trees lined the boulevard, their branches casting crisscross, skeletal shadows on the pavement. Parked cars lined the street. A few of the houses had open curtains and I could see inside to big- screen TVs and bookshelves and pictures on the walls.
The cold numbed my head a bit. It didn’t seem quite as heavy as it had, but movement made the world pitch and sway in a way that made me think I must look drunk as I tried to stay upright and moving forward. “I don’t know,” I told Hero as I crouched there unsteadily. “I don’t think I can make it much farther. I hope you’re taking me to a hospital.”
He licked his paw and looked past me to the street.
I turned in time to see the corner streetlight illuminate the white and black of a police patrol car slowing down to inspect me. I waved him over. Her, actually, I realized when the window powered down. “Are you okay, ma’am?” she asked.
I shook my head no, which sent my world tumbling again. “I think I’m going to pass out,” I managed to explain before I did exactly that.
The sad truth is that there have been a lot of moments of unconsciousness in my life.
Whenever Lilith takes over, I’m out like a light. But when that happens I experience nothing. It’s a big, old blank. From my perspective, it’s like no time has elapsed from conscious moment to conscious moment.
It was unsettling to find myself dreaming. At least, I assumed that’s what was happening, given the unreality of the setting.
A Greek temple surrounded me. In fact, where I stood reminded me of pictures I’d seen of the Parthenon in Athens, except not so crumbly. This place could pass for new. Gleaming white marble columns surrounded a cool, flag-stone floor. Orange blossoms and sea salt scented a warm breeze that rustled my hair and tugged at the edges of my simple, wrapped toga. Somehow I’d lost my bra, underwear, and shoes. Whoa. The last time I was dressed like this, it was at some pagan-festival ritual.
When I turned around, I discovered a huge statue of Athena. She looked majestic holding Her ever-present shield and a wicked-looking spear. Ringlets of hair fell out of Her crested helmet, and Her face was smooth and polished marble that had been painted an olive flesh color. Athena’s eyes gazed unseeingly over everything with pupils colored a perfect stormy gray. It looked odd, but then I recalled my history professor in college explaining that most of the marble in Greek and Roman times had actually been painted quite garishly.
A voice in my head said, “The Old Ones demand sacrifices.”
I had no idea what that meant. Was She the Goddess who had answered my hurried, hopeful prayers in the basement? Was I to assume it was Athena who had sent Hero? The police officer to my rescue? I mean, someone’s magic had clearly been at work, and Lilith had never been exactly subtle.
“Uh. Thanks?” I said.
Athena’s eyes flashed unkindly. I shrank back a bit. After all, the last time I had any kind of direct communication with Athena, She’d implied that what She wanted from me was devotion, worship. I had been neglecting that aspect of my craft, and in all the post-wedding excitement, I never really made good on that promise. So I knelt down before the terrible beauty of Athena, perhaps my new patroness, and asked, “What can I do for my Goddess?”
The smile She flashed was cold. “Sever all ties to that Other.”
She didn’t need to tell me who She meant. It was clear She wanted me to jettison Lilith.
But we were bonded, Lilith and I. Was that even possible? I looked and saw a vision of myself standing beside Athena. Only, the me that stood there was strong and confident. I wasn’t hiding behind my Goth gear anymore either. My hair was blond again but really cute—kind of still in a pixie but more spiky. I was wearing my skinny jeans and a white T-shirt and looked like I had a seriously healthy glow about me that was kind of sexy in an I-could-see-myself-on-the-cover-of- Women’s-Health-magazine kind of way.
Wow. Was that the person I could be if Athena were my patron?
It looked like all I stood to lose was a few pounds and the Queen of Hell, so I said simply, “Thy will be done.”
Before I even opened my eyes, I knew I was in a hospital because I could smell the antiseptic. Then someone shone a light in my eye. “Oh, you’re awake. Do you know your name?” the man with a trim salt-and-pepper beard asked.
“Garnet Lacey,” I said somewhat uncertainly.
“What year is it?”
I had no idea. I took a stab at it, “Twenty ten?”
“I want you to count backward from one hundred by seven.”
“Buddy,” I explained groggily. “I couldn’t do that on a good day.”
“Try,” he insisted, still blinding me with his penlight.
“One hundred. Ninety-three. Okay, wait . . . subtract ten and add three. Uh, eighty-six? Is that how it works? Seventy-nine? Is that right? Do I pass?”
“Close enough,” Salt-and-Pepper Beard said kindly. Then, to a nurse with a mask over her face and one of those paper shower things covering her hair, bearded guy explained that I’d need X-rays and some other stuff I didn’t really understand but that sounded quite official. He used words like stat that made me nervous, but he confirmed what I’d already suspected. Larkin had slipped me the date-rape drug, Rohypnol.
“We’ll need to do a rape kit,” the doctor said.
My eyes were wide. “But . . . but . . . wouldn’t I know?”
He shook his head sadly and I felt my heart seize.
“They wouldn’t have,” I insisted, though I hated the idea that I couldn’t know for sure and my pulse pounded in my ears as tears came to my eyes. Worse, they had taken my clothes off, though I still had my swimsuit on, didn’t I? Lilith slithered along my belly protectively.
“We need to be sure,” the doctor informed me.
I didn’t want to think about it. “Where’s Hero?” I asked suddenly. Trying to sit up, I realized I was quite strapped down. Panic seeped into my voice, “Where’s the cat?”
The nurse patted my shoulder. Her touch sent a wave of dizziness through me, and I briefly saw the face of the hawk-headed Horus. “We’ll find your kitty for you, honey,” she said in that way that made me certain I’d never see Hero again. I tried to relax and not miss my brave feline companion as they rolled me down the hall.
I cried through the rape kit and the HIV blood test and the entire time the admissions nurse asked me all sorts of questions about my insurance. She handed me a Kleenex and gave me one of those annoying plastic hospital bracelets that she fit loosely around the bandages on my wrists that made me look like I’d attempted
suicide. At least the bandages kept her fingers from touching my skin. I made her promise six times that she would call Sebastian for me. I wrote down his cell and explained we were staying at the Saint Paul Hotel.
Then I was wheeled to a white-walled room that I shared with a middle-aged black woman who had a horrible cough. She had the radio tuned to some soft rock station. “Does the music bother you?”
I’d learned not to shake my head too much, so I simply smiled and told her that it didn’t. My tears had worn wet tracks on my face, and I could see she wanted to ask questions but thought better of it. We settled into our own silences.
The room was small and brightly dingy in the way of hospitals. Brackets high up on the wall held a huge box TV—one for each of us. We both had nightstands. My roommate’s was filled with Styrofoam cups half full of ice water and a tissue box that hung off the back edge.
I stared out the window. I couldn’t really see much between the dusty, plastic venetian blinds and the frost that thickly sheeted the glass. It was a lonely, ugly place.
I hoped Sebastian got my message.
The doctor with the trim beard poked his head in the door and, seeing me awake, came in purposefully. I sat up straighter when he pulled the curtain around the bed. “The test came back negative,” he informed me.
I let go of a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.
“The toxicology lab had a lot to say, however.” He rattled off a list of chemicals with crazy-long names, and I waited patiently for something in English. Finally, he said, “With all that in your system, I’d say you’re lucky to be alive. Thank God you got to the hospital when you did and we were able to initiate a detox regime.”
Thank Goddess, you mean.
Closing my eyes, I sent a silent “thank you” to the Goddess Bast, the Egyptian patron of cats, and to my dear Hero, who I prayed found a nice, fat, juicy mouse somewhere to fill that skinny stomach of his.
“Try to rest,” the doctor said. “But, you understand, in cases like this I have to inform the police.”
As if waiting for that introduction before making her entrance, a Hmong woman in police uniform strolled into the room. The doctor patted my blanket-covered leg and told me everything was going to be okay. I thanked him. My roommate shot me a nervous look and suddenly found a book to read.
“Garnet Lacey?”
Why was it that most of my conversations lately started this way? Just once I’d like a “Good afternoon” or “Hey, how’s it going?” With a sigh, I grudgingly agreed to my identity. “I wish I wasn’t.”
Police officers rarely find my sense of humor to their taste. She just scrunched her thin lips into a deeper frown and nodded like that would have to do. “Do you want to tell me about what happened today?”
Despite the question, I knew there was no avoiding answering, whether I wanted to or not.
“I guess I was kidnapped.” I thought about adding the part where I figured that the boys who had me were part of an organization that believed my husband masterminded the course of human history, but I’ve also learned that when dealing with the law, the smarter course of action was to say as little as possible.
“Kidnapped?” The cop repeated somewhat skeptically. Over the bridge of her small, pug nose, she observed me critically. “I thought this was a case of . . . didn’t the doctor say you had the Rohypnol in your system? Usually that involves someone you might have met at a bar or possibly someone you know?”
“Larkin,” I said. “Larkin”—oh, crap, what was his last name?—“Eshleman?”
I gave her a description then, too, a damn fine accurate one, because I was mad at Larkin for scaring me with this whole date-rape thing.
“Do you have any idea why someone would try to kidnap you?”
“Ransom. My husband has a lot of money,” I said, again sticking with the simple and leaving out the conspiracy theories and vampirism. “We’re from out of town. Here for our honeymoon.”
For the first time, the cop took a notebook from the pocket of her jacket. She wrote something down, nodding to herself. “What’s your husband’s name?”
“Sebastian Von Traum,” I said, and then spelled his last name at her request.
She looked at me a little disappointed, as though perhaps she’d been hoping I’d say a name she’d recognize as famous. I fought the urge to explain that there were a lot of people of influence she’d probably never heard of out there, and, anyway, that was no reason to get that dismissive look in her eyes.
“If this really is a kidnapping, it’s a matter for the FBI.” She tucked her notebook away, like she’d already solved the case.
“Oh, good,” I said mostly to myself, since she’d started to leave. “I’d feel better with Dominguez on things.”
She stopped midturn. “Are you referring to Special Agent Gabriel Dominguez? How do you know him? Are you friends?”
I couldn’t exactly say he was a friend and had no desire to tell her I’d been investigated before, but . . . “Yeah.”
She nodded and gave me a sincere smile. “He’s a good guy. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
“Thank you,” I said and really meant it.
A curt nod and she was gone.
The rest of the night I spent intermittently snoozing and staring at the frost-laced window and wondering exactly how one got rid of a Goddess that didn’t want to leave. And could I even do it? After Coyote tried to steal Lilith, She’d bonded to me in a new and powerful way. Would having another Goddess waiting in the wings be enough to break that bond?
After an hour or two, my roommate got wheeled out for tests and I had the place to myself. I briefly switched on the TV, but I found it more disturbing than restful. Between the drugs and not having owned a television for several years, I found myself much more sensitive to the jerky, fast motion of the whole experience. When I started to feel dizzy, I switched it off.
At some point I must have fallen asleep because I dreamed of the bogeyman.
6.
Justice
ASTROLOGICAL CORRESPONDENCE:
Libra
It was spring; the birds chirped as I watered my collection of potted herbs. I sat on the front porch of my old duplex. A darkness prowled just beyond my sight, in a deep, coniferous forest that suddenly sprung up in my front yard in that way of things in dreams. At first, I thought it was a wolf stalking me, but then I caught sight of a tattered black trench coat and a down-swept, wide-brimmed hat. A feral, sawtooth smile materialized, Cheshire cat-like, from the inky gloom.
“Oh, hi, Mátyás,” I said with a happy wave.
The bogeyman waved back. “Hey, Garnet.”
Sebastian’s son is not only a half-vampire, slowly aging teenager, but he’s also a dream-walker. His Romany relatives call him something in their language that translates roughly to “moon thief.” Anyway, since most people’s subconscious registers his presence as a threat, he appears as that guy you’re always running from in your dreams—the bogeyman.
Mátyás leaned on the porch railing. Closer, he was no less frightening. Considering he was sort of an average- looking kid in the real world, his dream persona was deeply disturbing. His teeth were like uneven blades and his eyes were dark, empty pits. Under the hat, his hair flowed wildly, as if constantly tangled by an unseen wind.
“It’s sweet of you to check up on me,” I teased. A glass of lemonade appeared in my hand and I offered it to him.
When he took it, the liquid changed black and viscous. He sniffed it and recoiled. “Childhood trauma involving poison, Dr. Freud?” he asked, setting the cup down on the nightstand of the hospital bed.
I lay in a coffin that was propped up against the wall. “Uh, sorry,” I said stepping out of it and brushing the spiderwebs from my shroud. “I must be more freaked about being in the hospital than I realized.”
“Hospital?”
“Yeah, after the kidnapping.”
Mátyás opened his mouth to say something more, but a sha
ke of my shoulder fragmented his image, until it fell like shattered glass into wakefulness.
“Garnet?”
Sebastian had arrived with a huge bouquet of red roses. Blinking away the sleep, I accepted the flowers and a kiss gratefully.
“I just saw Mátyás,” I said between yawns.
He nodded but didn’t seem terribly surprised. Mátyás was especially drawn to haunt friends and family. “I would have brought some coffee but the doctors told me it might upset your stomach,” he said, pulling up a metal chair with a beige vinyl seat. Finding my hand, he took it. His thumb caressed my knuckles. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I’m so sorry we fought.”
“Me too.”
My roommate never returned, I noticed. She must have requested a room in the non-fugitive-from-justice wing. He glanced around the room with the look of someone who loathed spending time in hospitals. I couldn’t agree more. Maybe now that he was here, I could be discharged.
“I can’t believe you’re in the hospital. How did this happen? Where was Lilith?”
So now he wanted Her in my life?
I could sense real concern in his expression, like it suddenly occurred to him that he might have to worry about me a lot more if I somehow had lost Lilith. “Lilith isn’t everything, you know,” I said. I didn’t want to admit how much this whole thing with Larkin scared me too. “I could take care of myself.”
Sebastian snorted a little oh-sure-you-can laugh. “I’m just as glad you have a Goddess at your beck and call, what with all the trouble you seem to find or, perhaps more accurately, make.” His smile broadened. Before I could get defensive, he added, “Do you know what Courtney told me? She said you’re the reason people get lost in the Lake of the Isles neighborhood. It’s not drunken Irishmen—it’s the entire troop of faerie folk you accidentally loosed in a park one Imbolc.”
Oh, that.
“Haven’t they caught them all yet?”
Honeymoon of the Dead Page 13
