Blood & Spirits (3 page)

I’m thirty minutes early. That barely leaves me enough time to do a real sweep of the area to make sure there won’t be any embarrassing surprises once he’s here.

Idling to a stop, tires against the cracked concrete parking block, I let out a deep sigh and look deep into my eyes in the rearview mirror. I hate cutting things so close.

Stepping out into the parking lot, I take a deep breath, steeling myself. While I’m relieved not to find anything immediately out-of-place, I’m not foolish enough to take anything for granted. Jessica, one of my errand runners, was sitting on this place today, to let me know if anything untoward happened. She thinks I have a shipment of drugs coming in, and I’m more than happy to have her believe that for now. Some people get so excited thinking they’re doing something illegal. Give ‘em what they want, right?

I let my consciousness leave my body and flit back and forth across the landscape, looking for anything that could be a threat, anything I might have missed. All that is natural or living becomes closer to me, a part of me, an extension of my body. I can’t ‘feel’ in this area as well as I’d like – there are too many manmade impediments – but that doesn’t stop me from giving it every ounce of effort in me.

In this kind of place I’ll have to do my leg work with my legs. That sucks, but what doesn’t lately?

I’m so preoccupied that I’m fifty feet from my Charger, looking behind the rental car building, before noticing I’ve left my keys in the ignition. I really am a child again; trying to make sure the house is clean before her parent gets home.

I’m walking the crumbling lot from end to end, still fumbling with the ripped straps on my dress. It seems that I have managed to keep everyone completely oblivious to Jules’ arrival.

Wrapping the straps hanging down from my left side around my right hand, with the dress in my left, I give one quick jerk and remove them. He’ll notice, I think as I drop them into my purse, but now I don’t look so disheveled to anyone else who sees me.

A warm ripping sensation spreads through the back of my neck and chest a second before I hear the pop.

Looking down at pieces of my chest laying on the parking lot in front of me, I roll my eyes and growl.

“Really?”

This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot, but now on top of everything else there’s blood on my dress. Thankfully, the shot only went through my body. Two inches lower and the front of my dress would be as frayed out as the skin and upper bones of my chest. Four inches higher and my head would have come off, and then I’d be beyond caring.

I fall to the ground on my stomach to sell my ‘death’ to whoever just pulled the trigger. Laying motionless I don’t have to wait long. An engine starts in the distance, then tires pull up next to me.

Only one door opens and closes, with the sound of one set of feet.

How sad is it that this is the good news of my night so far? Only one asshole trying to kill me this time.

I let him turn me over and shine a flashlight in my face. He’s checking a photo to make sure I’m me.

The plates on the van he’s driving are from Texas. They’re hiring people from out-of-state to kill me now? That’s great.

A hand pushes into my neck, checking for a pulse that’s not there. This guy has no clue what he’s hunting.

He hoists me up on his hip and carries me to the side door of the van. Holding my limp body under one arm, he jerks the door open then roughly drops me on the carpet like a sack of potatoes.

He slams the door and runs around to get in the driver’s seat. His hand is on the gear shifter when I slide silently up behind his seat and press my boot knife to his throat. His bladder releases and the pungent smell of urine rushes up to fill my nose. This is one of the times a super-sensitive sense of smell is less than a blessing.

“Wanna tell me what you think you’re doing?” I ask mockingly.

“You’re dead. I shot you. You didn’t have a pulse. You have a hole all the way through you!”

The wavering and panic in his voice are nice, but I don’t have time to enjoy it now.

The gaping hole in me is rapidly closing, skin and bone reconnecting, but it’s still left a gory mess down the front of my dress. Of all the times this sort of bullshit could happen, this has to be the worst. What happens if it doesn’t heal fast enough for me to get in to meet Jules? I’m sure he’d frown on me starting a riot in the airport.

“Damn it!” I spit out before focusing up on the would-be assassin. He wilts under the heat of my gaze.

“You’re lucky I’m short on time and manpower to clean up bodies tonight. Tell me who hired you.” The blade sinks into him lightly, letting a trickle of warm blood run down onto my hand. My tongue slides around my lips even though I’ve already gorged myself this evening; my hunger is second nature, but I have to control it. I push my mind’s eye into his head painfully. As he whimpers and cries I start flipping through his thoughts like I had a remote and was flipping channels.

“Molder. A guy named Molder. Two hundred grand, no questions.”

Christ, this guy took a contract over the internet. He doesn’t even know who hired him really. Next thing you know people are going to be after me from chat rooms and social networking sites.

“Maybe next time you’ll ask some questions, huh?” I jab the blade in-between the bones of his shoulder and turn it. He screams and that makes me smirk.

Reaching into his back pocket as he leans away from me in pain, I find his wallet. I rifle through it until I find the little plastic card that unflatteringly depicts his face next to his home address. I hold it up in front of his face, making sure he sees it. Then, smiling viciously, I drop it in my purse.

“Thomas Laird. I know your name, your face, your address, and your license plate number. You can leave the state now and never come back, or I can make sure you suffer for many, many agonizing years before I let you die. It’s your call.”

I wipe my knife on his shirt and get out of the van. His eyes are saucers, looking at the hole in my chest that’s almost completely closed. I expected him to take off as soon as I was out, but he’s just sitting there.

I don’t have time for this. I take a step toward him. “Boo!”

That’s all it takes. Within seconds, his taillights are fading into the distance like a memory as I walk back to my car.

 Dropping into the bucket seat I check to make sure I’m presentable in my visor mirror.

“Looks like I spilt food all over the front of me but past that, I’m fine.” I say it aloud, as though actually hearing it will make the lie to myself more convincing.

I stand up out of the car and start flicking off the clots and chunks remaining on the front of my poor dress. I slam the car door and put my knife away, convinced the night can’t get any worse.

My feet take the direction of the terminal again, this time with me physically heading there, past the barricade and in through the automatic door. I stop long enough to let everyone who’s here get a good look, before heading to the window near the arrivals gate.

Then it hits me. He’s here.

I can feel Jules’ presence, like a second soul in my body with me, before the plane even touches down. He’s already scanning through my emotions. I can hide myself from almost anyone, but he made me, and to him I’ve always been an open book.

The blinking lights on the horizon grow larger. The dark silhouette of the plane comes slowly into view and the butterflies in my stomach begin to try to break free in earnest. I give the inside of the building one last slow sweep without moving. The bark of the tires hitting the tarmac echoes in my ears. There really is no turning back now. What have I done?

I can see his face as soon as he exits the plane. Even at this distance his eyes meet mine, and I know. Those piercing blue-green irises that I love and fear so much show me he’s more displeased with me that I had hoped he would be. It’s time to start the song and dance. I can only hope to impress him enough with what I’ve accomplished that he’ll be willing to forgive, or at least accept, my failures.

He walks in like he owns even the people standing near him, and they treat him as though he actually does. All eyes are on him, and I can’t help but want and fear him a little, like everyone else here does. There’s a beauty to his face, to all six-foot of his body really, and the way he carries himself. But none of that comes close to the haunting otherworldliness of his being that you can’t help but sense just by being in his presence.

He’s wearing the hat I bought him. I’ve always thought he looked good in a beret. The rest of his attire is black and casual, under his trademark leather. He obviously thinks he’s going to have to get dirty.

I’m insulted by that for a moment, and then I realize that he might.

Twenty-three short paces and he’s through the metal detector and we’re standing face to face. He looks me up and down like a military inspection. The memory of the dress, at least, has brought a slight smile. Either that or he thinks the condition of my clothing is sad enough to be laughable. It’s really a toss-up.

“It’s good to see you again.” I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist. He returns my embrace, but it’s loose and cold. “I hope your flight wasn’t too horrible.”

“I hate to fly V, and you know that.” He doesn’t hold back his contempt. He takes a silver case from his coat pocket, opening it as he turned from me to face the exit. Producing a cigarette from it, he closes the case and taps the smoke against it solidly three times. He had far more to say, I could tell, but not in front of the breathers. “Let’s just get going, shall we?”

He snaps his lighter and takes a long first drag. Exhaling slowly he gestures and we begin to walk to baggage claim to retrieve his suitcase. Several workers look as if they are about to inform him the terminal is smoke-free, then think better of it, going on with their work. A predator and prey reaction; I don’t inspire that in breathers. Honestly, I hope I never do.

***

As we drive back to the ranch house, in what started as strained silence, he questions me about why I seem to have so many connections to the living world, and why it is that I spend so much time ‘playing with my food.’

I try to defend myself, but the concept seems so off-putting to him that my defense for my actions comes off as little more than hollow justification.

“After you left, I began to branch out. I became more civic-minded about the community I was calling home.”

“Did you somehow delude yourself into thinking that any of their affairs needed your direct attention, or did you simply need to feel important? What are you now? Their salvation or damnation? Didn’t I teach you better than that?”

I shrug. “In some ways, I see myself as a blessing and a curse here, and the few others who actually know about me feel the same way, I’m sure. “ I know the words are wrong as soon as they break free of my lips.

“Know about you? The house you run, or what you are?” His words are as biting as his gaze.

“Both.” My only hope now was to tear through this as fast as I can. “Of course, the city leaders would condemn me and my house publicly, but quite a few of them have found their way to my back door in the wee hours of the morning.”

Leaving the lights and buildings of the city behind, we were now entering a more rural landscape. Now I am free. I open up my senses fully again. He could feel me spreading out to fill my surroundings. I could tell he was impressed, slightly, but not enough to outweigh his disappointment.

“They have regular girls or boys, and a few of them are actually my regulars personally. It’s a wonderful side effect of taking what I need from them that they only seem to remember the blissful high of being ‘entertained’ and nothing else. I mean, what would they think if they knew that I’d been draining more than just their pockets for years?”

“Who knows about what you are?”

“Frank, Julie, and Leslie. They’re my staff.”

He sighs deeply and shakes his head. “I know I taught you better.”

“And Lucy.” I have to get it out there; it’s too much a part of why I needed him here to prolong my admission. “Lucy knows what I am. She knows almost everything about me.”

“Lucy is?” His tone is soft and even, but his disappointment hits me like bricks.

“The breathers call her ‘Mama Maiden.’ She died back in the 1800’s. She kinda looks after the weak, ya know? The street people and the working girls. Like a guardian angel.”

“You mean a phantom, a spirit?” He almost loses his anger. I can see it flash in him. “Why would you be dealing with a spirit? We’ve discussed this before. How many times?”

“It goes beyond that. There’s something larger at play here. The spirits know about it, and it’s had an effect on our kind too. I think Rachel is the key to figuring out what’s going on, and stopping it if we can, but I can’t do it alone.”

My words hang there in the space between us, waiting for him.

“Rachel is the spirit child?”

“Yes! She was taken, and…” I have to slow down. If I’m overly emotional, I don’t even want to know what he’ll think, what he’ll do. ”Jules, my house was set on fire. There have been grave robbers and rituals. There’s a hit out on me, and a warrant for my arrest. Even Jacobi, who was our eldest here, has disappeared. That’s why I called you. My dealings with spirits didn’t bring this trouble; it just made me notice more of what was going on.”

Dead silence. Pulsating tendrils of his conscious will are moving through my mind. I can feel him sorting through my emotions, wordlessly, as the cool night wind swims past us.

I am all too aware of each second. They pass like their own lifetimes. I’m almost to my house. We are both only listening to the engine of the Charger as I strain it to its breaking point. We can’t arrive soon enough.

I whip into the driveway too fast, accompanied by the smell of burning brakes. I’m out of the car before the engine has completely died. His bag is in my hand and the trunk lid is closing when I notice he’s already standing at the door. I don’t even have time to put the top up.

This would be so much easier if he loved me like I loved him and didn’t see me as a child he was responsible to care for. Or am I projecting again? Why did I ever think that psychological help was a good idea? It only made me question more.