Endless Night (17 page)

“A body,” I whispered through jagged breathes.

Bat shit crazy I is.

Chapter Sixteen

As quickly as I could, I scrambled to my feet. On unsteady legs, I stood wobbling back toward the wall behind me.

“What?” Even in the dim light, I could see the lines on his face deepen.

He lifted his feet and stepped back and away from me through the body that wasn’t there anymore. The mist had dissipated leaving nothing but the memory seared into my brain. His hands still spread wide in search of my body to grab hold of.

My knees wobbled and I was thankful there was a nice stiff wall at my back to catch my fall. I knew what I’d seen. I knew I wasn’t making shit up. It wasn’t my style. Something was causing these hallucinations. Something magical? Doubted it. Something medicinal? Much more likely. Serious brain tumor? Good God, I hoped not.

“What is happening to me?” I asked through drawn breathes in a voice barely above a whisper.

My hands clung to a railing, which was reassuringly secured firmly into the wall, holding me up. My brain was swimming with the visual of another headless corpse. Granted, I’d seen the real deal up close and personal a few months back, but one didn’t generally assume seeing corpses was going to be more than a onetime thing. Headless naked bitches, blood pouring from phantom wounds, macabre dreams and bloody children and shiny caskets, it was all too much for one little journalist to handle. Even big heap bad ass Dylan Hart could only handle so much before she was in desperate need of strong alcohol. Shit, antipsychotics might be in order.

“I believe it’s time to leave,” his voice held such determination; it nearly masked his fear completely.

Without a word, I let him wrap his strong arm around my corseted waist and lead me through the barely lit hallway. I wasn’t hurt, physically anyway; there was no reason I couldn’t walk myself out. But this way was better for both of us. He obviously needed to play the dashing prince and I, for one of the only times in my life, allowed myself to be rescued.

I fought hard to not limp, or whimper, or in some way feign
some form of illness as we emerged from the darkness into the brightly lit lobby area I’d come through to begin with. It felt ridiculous to be escorted by a dashingly handsome man and not be walking upright on my own. My inner pride wanted me to pretend as if my personal situation was far worse outwardly to explain away the need to be practically carried. Other than the fact that I was almost certain there’d be white coats waiting out front, straightjacket and fully loaded syringes in hand. Being nuts was no excuse to be frail.

Luckily, the only living souls to lay eyes on the two of us were the two door openers, or whatever they were called, that’d gracefully opened the two extravagant doors when we first arrived. By the time we reached those doors, my breathing was returning to normal and the sensation of sheer insanity was fading. Anger was filling the void it left behind.

There had to be some reason, other than me being flat out fucked in the head, for me to be hallucinating so severely with no psychotropic enhancements. None consumed willingly that was.

A car
, that was not the one we’d arrived in, pulled through the curved drive and stopped precariously in front of where the two of us stood. If we’d been standing an inch further from the steps, we might no longer have had all of our toes.

A light chuckle filled the cooling night air and a set of chills shook my body down to my toes. From the darkness to our left
, she emerged.

O
h, look it’s my best friend in the whole wide world.

“Do you like my gift, ‘
cher
?” In the soft light of the porch lamps, I saw a hideous grin begin to twist at the corners of her mouth. Her piercing blue eyes glared at me through a set of thickly caked lashes. I noticed then, while shaking in my boots, her beautifully wicked face was missing its eyebrows. Maybe they were merely too blonde as happened with certain people, but there was nothing to be seen in this particular lighting. It added a creep factor that made me want to rush into the vehicle that had nearly crippled me.

“You are not welcome, Azelie. I wish you to leave us now,” Cyrus spoke as if these words alone would rid us of this little dreadlocked problem. I doubted it.

“Pfft,” she scoffed through her teeth unattractively. Apparently, she didn’t think so either. “These words have little meaning, boy,” her words hissed from her perfectly bowed lips. “Your lover must learn her place,” her tiny finger pointed at me with a crook to it, like a little cream-colored hook.

“Why?” I said defiantly.

“Why?” she huffed. “Why? Question yourself ‘dis, why you kill, aye?” her voice was soft. This terrified me more than her screeching ever could. Quiet bitches are the ones who plotted your death.

I stumbled over my words in my quick rebuttal. I really had a reason, really I did. I was being threatened. They’d kidnapped Tatum. They’d been slaughtering innocent, alright maybe not innocent, but killing women nonetheless. They deserved it. Those little bastards deserved it and I’d do it again if it came right down to it. “They needed killing,” I said with the iciest cold tone I could gather.

A shrill laugh pierced the otherwise silent landscape. “Vigilante? This why I take your heart. This why I give you visions of death all ‘round you,” her hands moved as she talked, like they were telling a story her voice was leaving out.

“A punishment?” It was my turn to be shrill. “You want to punish me? Bah! Who the fuck are you to put me on a mental time-out for killing two boys who would’ve killed me in their place if I hadn’t had the balls to do it first? Whoever you think you are, whatever you think you can do, fuck off with it. I don’t buy into bullshit.” I turned from the tiny woman and opened the backdoor of the waiting car.

“Marienne will not be happy when she hears about this. Using your powers against the escort of the Secondus of the House of Cailleadh could cost you your place in the entertainment troupe,” Cyrus intervened.

Ooh, burn.
I thought to myself as I rolled my eyes at his idiocy.

“Marienne is ignorant and won’t sway. She come to me for supremacy oils and
gris gris. Marienne House survives on my power. You and your whore mean nothing to her.”

I saw Cyrus physically cringe when she said the word whore. It really didn’t bother me. I had bigger Cajun fish to fry.

“Why do I mean something to
you
? What the fuck have I done to cause this?” I tried hard to hide the desperation in my voice.

I wanted it to end. I dreaded the thought that this woman was capable of actually controlling my thoughts, by whatever means, and causing these horrific visions. And the possibility it would go on as long as she desired, terrified me. My logic clung to the fact that things such as magic were not of this world. But it was beginning to appear as though I was out of the loop of what lay beneath the sparkling top layer of our society.

“Blood on your hands,” her body slithered as she dropped her head to look through her dreary lashes. “
My
blood on your hands,” her words hissed through her teeth.

“What?” I could not believe what
I’d just heard. I’d never had her blood anywhere near me. Now, I knew she was crazy. “Are you out of your mind? I’ve never touched you.”

“My blood on your hands. Thick, and red, and
drippin’ from your body.” I felt her eyes bore into my head, searching for something in there somewhere. Seeking out subconscious knowledge.

“Are we talking metaphorically here…or…?” I was totally lost and had the feeling the tiny witch woman was growing more and more irritated with me by the minute. In a way I liked it, but then again I thought her irritation could lead to a serious ass kicking on my end.

The woman spoke not a word and simply continued her stare. In a moment, a flash of images penetrated my mind. My hands shoving a pool cue deep into the soft flesh of the overweight jolly Samoan vampy boy that bloody night in May. Flashes of random images of familiar faces and insignificant instances filled tiny voids between the important images. The images I was certain were the key points in this situation. Suddenly, I was watching myself tumbling down the concrete steps, wrestling with the lanky Diego. We landed hard at the foot of the stairs and crashed into stacks of white five-gallon buckets. They cracked, tipped and spilt syrupy red blood in a gory mess. It covered the floor beneath us, Splattering across my face, soaking my clothing, and seeping around the body of the poor vampire boy, who was unlucky enough to land on the bottom of the pile. Blood trickled and pooled along the concrete floor quickly, but I caught a glimpse of familiar symbols painted sporadically around the area.

Seeing it as if from another’s eyes opened up so many different opportunities. I watched my face contort with fear and so much rage until I almost didn’t recognize myself. I watched as I lifted a piece of broken pool cue and jammed it into the sloppy wound left over from my bullet. Being a bystander, the scene horrified me. It was even more horrifying that the murderess was me. Granted, I was fully within my right as a human being to protect myself and the lives of others by any means necessary, but that didn’t forgive the look that passed over my eyes right before I shoved that piece of wood, that makeshift stake, deep into the boy’s broken flesh. I looked…satisfied.

My vision flashed white, as if someone took a photo too close to my face, and I was back in the present. Only, the scene was a bit different. I was sitting on the asphalted driveway, a few feet from our waiting car, staring up at Cyrus and his overly concerned face. I shook my head and felt a little like a cartoon character shaking off a bad fall. Little yellow birds and stars tinkling overhead.

Azelie stood only a few feet from us now. I wondered how long I’d been in psycho-land and why Cyrus allowed that crazy woman to get so close to us. More than that, for obvious reasons, I wondered what in the fuck had just happened to my already fragile mind.

“What…?” I asked in a voice that sounded nothing like my own. I sound
ed like a child waking from a nightmare. So tiny. So scared. Fuck that. “What in the fuck did you do to me you evil bitch!” Yelling from your spot on the ground was really ineffective. In case you were wondering.

“It is what you’ve done, bitch.” That word did not fit that tiny girl. It seemed somehow beneath her.

“Ugh, I have no idea what you’re talking about! Please, for the love of all that is Holy, tell me what I’ve done to you so we can move on with our lives.” Cyrus held his hand out and I took it. This was not the time to question chivalry. A flash of a memory, not of the actual event, but from the images that’d just popped into my head, symbols on the floor. Symbols I’d seen wrapping around the itty bitty waist of my assailant.

How interesting.

I stood, feet firmly planted to the earth. Determination in my voice, I let the little bitch in on my theory. “What did you have to do with Diego and Sam and the lot of the dead hookers in California?” I saw Cyrus from the corner of my eye turn his head to face me so quickly I’d have thought it would spin right off his shoulders. Quite glad that didn’t happen.

She chuckled softly and looked at Cyrus. Not me. “You stay, boy,” her little crooked finger came up and pointed at him. Commanding him like a dog to stay put. The funny part was I think it worked. She turned to me, finger still aimed at Cyrus. “You come here, my house, the Loa brought you. Loa brought you to punish. My vindication.”

What the fuck is a Loa?

“It was you. I can’t believe it. How? Why?” I stammered on flabbergasted at the outlandish situation. How in the world did I end up walking right into her shop? If I ever believed in fate, it was at that moment. “What in the fuck do you need gallons of dead hooker blood for?” I wasn’t even yelling anymore. My shoulders slumped and I felt a little saddened at the situation. It was one thing when I thought these were only a couple of kids who lost their way in the seedy underworld of sex, blood, and rock ‘n’ roll. But knowing there was a purpose, a specific person, controlling the operation, it felt a bit too Jonestown for my maximum level of coping with life.

“What reason do I need? You have taken it from me and I want it back,” her tiny shoulders lifted slightly and dropped with little effort. A shrug that said she cared not a lick about what she’d done. About the lives she’d cost.

“You’re a fucking lunatic,” my words were beginning to blend together with frustration and out-and-out disbelief. “I should kill you where you stand.”

Goddamned gun laws!

“Oh, but you have no sticks,” she laughed at me. I hated being laughed at.

My brows set low over my eyes and I tightened my jaw. “I don’t need a fancy stick to kick your fucking teeth in,” spit sputtered through my teeth as I spoke through a set jaw.

Her laugh grew and echoed through the quiet night air until I couldn’t take it anymore. Unhindered by my low-heeled boots, I took off in an all-out sprint toward that incessant laughter. Dress crinkling around my legs; it only took a handful of long strides to reach the tiny woman. I leapt at her and landed square in the center of her body like a seasoned linebacker. She crumbled under my weight and I was glad, for the first time in my life, I was so damn big. We landed, one on top of the other, on the cold concrete walk that circled the driveway. Unlike every catfight you’d
ever seen in your life, there was no hair pulling. She’d already gotten all the hair she needed from me. Without another thought, I reared my fist back and released it with all my fury into her dainty face. I heard a crack and knew I’d likely broken her nose. She wanted blood she could have a bit of her own. Her tiny hand came from nowhere and cracked me across the jaw sending my head spinning on my shoulders. She was stronger than she looked. Must be all that hooker blood. I used both hands and wrapped them tightly through her thick dreads. Using them as leverage and pulled her closer to my face so we were eye to eye. Sitting with all my weight on her legs, I had the advantage and was confident in my positioning. I was thankful for that. I was thankful for the littlest miracles as of late. I was thankful my tit stayed right where it should be.