Blood Worship (Chasing Vampires)

by Barbara L. Black

  Dan smiled. He’d just bought a canoe with his own money and put it on top of the car he had purchased with his own share of the meth money. God, he loved having money. The people who said that money wasn’t important had never done without it, obviously. After all those years of having none, after staying with that miserable, miserly, crazy old woman, it was like being in heaven. Dan had never felt so alive.

  He loved meth.

  He loved the ceremonies and loved loved loved the expression on all those stupid people’s faces when they saw what was coming, when they realized that he’d tricked them. He wanted to laugh, every time, when they finally figured out that good ol’ Danny boy had engineered the whole thing.

  Dan laughed. He was really quite clever, but nobody ever realized it until it was too late.

  Dan heard a low, snorting sound and looked around to see a bull alligator slide sinuously down into the water until only his glittering eyes and his nostrils showed. Dan liked alligators; they were as old as the dinosaurs and they were the kind of cold-blooded killers that he admired. They were killers in the way he imagined the dinosaurs had been before they became extinct. They killed without regret and without feeling.

  Dan felt a little regret right now: He regretted that Andy Mossiman was already dead. He’d like to cut that whiney little punk and toss him in for the gators to feed on, see the frenzy in the water as they fought over him and tore off chunks of flesh. They would have dragged him down to drown, screaming, before they shoved him underneath something for a couple of days to ripen and rot. Alligators liked their meat a little aged.

  Oh, well. Some other time, maybe. Some other victim.

  “Here, fella,” Dan called softly. “Nice little dinner for you here.”

  He shoved the bundle over the side, not bothering to retrieve the canvas. No one was ever going to find the body, anyway, so what did it matter? There would be nothing left to find. What the gators didn’t eat, the other predators would. There might be a piece of bone or two left after they were all done, but who was going to find it out here? The swamp could hide a million bodies…and maybe it would need to.

  ***

  Roland Andrews was pissed.

  He couldn’t believe that he’d let himself be suckered into this. After all that talk to his wife about how he was going to be more assertive, how he was going to stop letting people push him around, here he was doing it again. He’d let his idiot neighbor talk him into taking him along on one of his trips to the Everglades. He knew the man drove him crazy, so why had he done it? Why did his mouth say yes, when his brain was screaming no no no?

  Roland cursed under his breath. He was a smart man, how did he let these things happen? He’d been one of hundreds of applicants, had competition from some of the best environmentalists in the business and yet he had won a grant to further his research strictly on the strength of his credentials and his proposal. So why did he revert to an eager-to-please little boy whenever anyone asked for a favor? Maybe he should consider a therapist, as his wife had suggested. He’d acted as if it was a crazy idea when she brought it up, but it was sounding a lot better now.

  The study he did in the swamps was important, and the data he collected could help them save the Everglades wildlife from extinction. He couldn’t afford to be distracted and yet somehow, a moron was in the boat with him. In a very small boat, in the middle of nowhere, and he would be stuck with him for hours.

  And it was his own fault.

  “Hey, look at all them gators! They’re vicious, ain’t they? Don’t get too close, ok?”

  Roland rolled his eyes. “They’re predators,” he said shortly. “If we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.” Idly, he let his gaze drift toward the alligators, then picked up his binoculars. He peered through them at the roiling mass of alligators. “Hand me the air horn.” His neighbor opened his mouth, probably to ask another inane question, and Roland cut him off. “Just hand it here!”

  It took three blasts of the air horn before the alligators began to disperse, and Roland swallowed down bile as they got close enough to see what they had been fighting over. Usually he loved the fecund smell of the Everglades, but suddenly it seemed fetid; the odor of death and decay.

  Floating in the water was the upper half of a body- the head and ragged torso of a young man.

  Roland’s neighbor leaned over the side and vomited when Roland reached out with gloved hands and hauled what was left of the body into the boat. He was still retching when Roland called 911 on his cell phone and spoke to an operator.

  ***

  Jorge decided to attack the woman that he was following in her own apartment.

  He’d been walking down the street after meeting up with Dan and getting his new supply when he saw her. He’d already stashed the drugs but he was too buzzed from checking the batch to stay at home. He just ambled down the street, laughing crazily. He’d go home when he came down a little, when he could stand to be shut behind four walls.

  When he saw her come out of the building he decided right then to do her, just like that. He’d see where she was going and if he had to, he’d wait. He knew where she lived, and all he’d have to do is hang around here a little.

  Yeah, he’d do her.

  She was tall and blond and plump, just the way he liked them. He followed her to the grocery store, smiling because he knew now that she was sure to go home after she left here. She never even noticed him, ‘cause he was way too slick, even if he was flying. He could act straight when he needed to.

  He didn’t see no ring on her finger, so she probably wasn’t married, but it didn’t matter if she was. If she had a man in there, he’d just kill him first. Or maybe he’d make the guy watch while he did her.

  Jorge waited until she finished her grocery shopping, then he followed her home and into the apartment building. It was just as easy as he’d thought it was going to be. Then he showed her his gun and made her take the stairs up to her apartment. He didn’t want to get in no elevator ‘cause there might be somebody in there and she might scream or something. Not that he was afraid of nobody, but it might get messy and then he wouldn’t get to have his fun.

  “Don’t make me mad, now,” he cautioned her in a slow, creepy voice that made goose bumps pop up on her arms. “You won’t like it if you make me mad. But I might.” And he giggled in a way that made her shudder.

  He shoved the gun in her back and she started up the stairs, her legs trembling. She could feel his breath on her back. She moved carefully, slowly, grasping the bag of groceries tightly against her chest. Maybe it would be okay. He seemed reasonable…but she shuddered anyway. She knew it wasn’t true, because she had seen his eyes. They were the eyes of a madman, flicking right and left, left and right. A tic distorted his face every few seconds, and his pupils were so tiny she could hardly see them.

  But maybe it would be all right. Maybe it would.

  When she got to her apartment, she could barely fit the key into the lock because her hands trembled so. He pressed the gun into her back and she forced it home with a cry of relief, tears on her cheeks. He motioned her into her apartment and stepped in behind her, then closed the door and locked it, sliding the deadbolt home. She stood numbly in the tiny foyer, almost paralyzed by panic. Why hadn’t she screamed and tried to run? What was she going to do now?

  What good was a deadbolt if the crazies were already inside the house?

  A big smile broke over Jorge’s face when she saw the other girl sitting on the raggedy couch. She started to run, but he showed her the gun and she subsided. He made the other girl sit down with her and he smacked his lips as he looked at them sitting there waiting for him, like they were his two slaves or something.

  Two blondes with a little wiggle and jiggle. It’s my lucky day.

  But not theirs.

  He was laughing when he walked over to them.

  ***

  Jessie was asleep.

  One minute she was wide-awake, an
d the next she was dreaming. She hadn’t realized she was so tired, but the emotional toll the last week had taken on her had been unbelievable, and it was easy for that to translate to the physical.

  Her mother was here, so she must be dreaming. You had to be asleep to dream.

  So she must have been tired.

  “I’ve got to tell you a story,” her mother said firmly from her cross-legged perch at the end of the bed. “And you have to listen, ‘kay, baby? It’s important.”

  “All right,” Jessie said. “If it’s important. I always liked your stories.”

  “This one’s not mine,” Dream-Mom said. “It’s a story that my Grandmother Belle told me and she says that she heard it from her Great-Grandmother, who told it to her when she was very little.”

  “The Grandma Belle that was Cherokee?” Jessie asked. “She always sounded like so much fun. I always wished I could have met her.”

  “She says hello,” Dream-Mom said. “She says that you are brave and beautiful and that she has met you many times. She says that you see her often in the warmth that shines from stranger’s eyes. The blood that you share with her knows when she is there, but she diluted the knowing in all her descendants when she married that no-good, stubborn, drunken German. She says that you must trust your heart and not your mind because you put too much faith in what you think is true and do not pay enough attention to what you feel is true.”

  Dream-Mom shook her head. “No, Grandma, I’m not telling her anything else. I’ve got to tell her this story and you keep getting off the subject,” she said heatedly to someone that Jessie could not see, even in her dream. Whoever it was must have subsided, because Dream-Mom began her story in a cadence that was not her own.

  This is the story of a chief who lived long ago. He was wise and brave, this chief, and he was very sad for his wife had just died, and he had no children. His wife had often urged him to take a second wife, for she said it was not right for such a great man to have no sons, but he had resisted. He did not want a second wife, he wanted only her. And so when she died, he was alone.

  One day, a young woman came riding into camp, her clothes torn and dirty and her face wild with grief. This young woman was wife to the chief’s brother and so she was his sister, and the chief honored her as such.

  “Help me,” she cried. “My husband your brother has been killed by our enemies to the north. They tried to take me prisoner, but I fought them and came here. You must avenge my husband!”

  When the chief heard this, he took a party of warriors and rode north. The wife of his brother went along to show him the place where her husband had been killed and to bring back the body as was proper.

  But something strange began to happen.

  As they rode north, the forest became darker and darker. Though it was summertime, the leaves had already fallen from the trees and it began to be very cold. The chief, who was both wise and brave, began to be afraid.

  “What witchcraft is this?” he thought, for he had never been this afraid before. The horses began to shy at the dark shadows, acting as they do when a great wolf stalks them. When the chief looked around, he saw that his warriors were afraid, too.

  When he looked at the woman again, he saw that she was not the wife of his brother at all, but a witch in disguise. The witch called all around her many crows, which cawed horribly. All of the Cherokee know that the crow is a portent of death.

  “What do you want?’ the chief asked the witch. “And where are my brother and sister?”

  “I have enslaved them,” said the witch. “But I will let them go if you will promise to take their place for you would make me a much better servant.” She laughed when she said it, for she knew that the chief was proud as well as brave, and it would be hard for him to serve as her slave.

  “Very well,” the chief said. “I love my brother and sister. But before I become your servant, I must go back to my village and sing my death song.” For he knew that once he came back to the witch, he would never leave.

  “Swear to me on your brother’s life that you will come back to this very spot one full moon from now,” said the witch. “And I will release my prisoners for I know that your word will not be broken once you give it.”

  The chief gave his word and she released his brother and his wife, who threw themselves at the chief’s feet, crying that they would rather stay with the witch than lose him.

  “What kind of man would I be if I went back on my word, even to a witch?” asked the chief, and they all hung their heads in sorrow.

  They all made ready to return to their homes, their hearts heavy, for they did not want to lose their wise leader.

  “I have a proposition for you, oh wise one. When you return, I will gamble with you for your life. I will put a white stone and a black stone each in a bag and you will choose one. If you choose the white stone, you will be free. If you choose the black stone, you will stay with me forever.”

  The warriors all clamored for the chief to take her bet, for he was the best in his tribe at games of chance. When they played the hand game, he always won, so the chief agreed.

  The chief and his warriors returned home and the chief thought to sing his death song right then, but the elders of the tribe convinced him to go and ask every member of the tribe for advice in how to win the witch’s game. The chief thought that it was a good idea, and he soon found himself with more answers than he wanted.

  Every person that he asked gave him a different answer. Some thought he should kill the witch, for she would kill him if she could, and she probably planned to do so. Some told him to cheat. Some thought that he should take the medicine man along to counteract any spell she put on him. One woman even suggested throwing poison into the witch’s eyes so that she was blinded and could not tell which stone he picked.

  None of the answers seemed right to the chief and time was growing short, so he asked the elders of the tribe if all the people in the village had given an answer. It turned out that one woman had not yet given her answer to the chief, so the day before he was to leave to join the witch, he went to seek out this woman, who he found washing clothes on the riverbank.

  He saw her only from the back first, and he thought that she was a fine figure of a woman, for she was sleek and muscled and strong as she did her work. Then she turned around and the chief saw that she was the ugliest woman that he had ever seen.

  Her hair was the texture of a horse’s tail and it surrounded a face that was the color of rancid fat. Her eyes were too close together and very small, and her nose was flattened on her face. Her teeth were huge as horse’s teeth and they stuck out between her lips, even when she closed her mouth. She seemed to have no chin.

  “I know what you should do,” she told him. “And I will tell you freely, with no expectation of reward.”

  She told him what she thought, and he was impressed at her reasoning. It was the best advice he had received yet, and he told her so. She stared at him without speaking until he became uncomfortable, and then she spoke again, looking shyly down at the ground.

  “I have a request of you,” she said. “I want you to take me as your wife, for my entire family is dead, and I have no kin. I have to rely on others to provide for me, and this hurts my pride. I want a home of my own and a man to call mine. I want children to take care of me in my old age, and I fear that I will never have them unless I marry now.”

  The chief agreed without hesitating.

  The next morning, he rode north with his warriors to meet the witch and he found her in the very spot that he had left her. She cackled when she saw him and her crows rose all around her, cawing horribly.

  “So,” she said. “You have kept your word.”

  She held out two bags to him and the chief took them from her, turning them over and over in his hands.

  “Enough!” she said finally. “Choose, and accept your fate.”

  The chief chose one of the bags and handed the other to the warrior by his si
de.

  “Look in the bag that I have not chosen,” he said. “If the rock is black, I have chosen correctly and I will return home triumphant. If it is white, I am lost.”

  “No!” cried the witch. “Look in the bag that you have chosen.”

  But it was too late – the warrior had already opened the other bag, and it contained a black stone. The witch cried out in rage, the crows screaming with her, so long and so loud that the chief and the warriors all put their hands over their ears. She stamped her feet and the ground trembled. A cold wind whipped them, and an oak tree fell with a crash. One of the warriors was almost crushed beneath it, but the chief pulled him away just in time.

  “Will you keep your word?” the chief shouted. “Or do you mean to kill us all and prove that you have no honor? We have played your game, and I have won.”

  The witch stopped her raging and the wind died down.

  “You have won your freedom,” the witch said grudgingly. “Go now, before I change my mind and kill you all.”

  Her crows came around her, lifting her by her garments and carrying her away, and the Cherokee all left, vowing never to come to this part of the forest again.

  The chief went home to prepare for a wedding, for he had given his word to the ugly woman. The elders of his tribe tried to talk him into marrying another, for they said that the woman was unsuitable. The chief was adamant, for she had saved him from a life of servitude. She had told him that the witch would try to cheat him, and it had been her idea to open the other bag, for she believed that both bags would contain black stones.

  At the wedding feast, all were uneasy at the bad match that they thought their chief had made. The bride sat proudly beside her new husband, her sallow cheeks flushed red. Some of the people began to make loud comments about her.

  “She is ugly and old,” said one. “She can never give him children.”

  “She is not worthy of him,” said another. “She should be ashamed at forcing this marriage on him.”

  “It’s a wonder she doesn’t whinny instead of speak,” said yet another. “With those teeth, I would expect it.”

  The chief kept his silence and ignored the chattering until he saw that his wife’s tiny eyes were shining dark with tears.