Grave Danger (17 page)

Standing a few inches shorter than his youngest
brother, Chas was as finely cut a figure of a man as his other
brothers. His light mocha colored skin and odd eye color revealed
his mixed bloodlines, which at one time had shamed and embarrassed
him.

Chas’s father had been a plantation owner, a
respectable gentleman living in South Carolina in the early part of
the nineteenth century. As plantations went in those days, it had
the usual laborers, including imported persons from the continent.
Chas’s mother had not been born a slave, but her son had; fathered
by the respectable plantation owner. Unfortunately, the man’s wife
didn’t take too kindly to the visual knowledge of her husband’s
infidelities. In the end, it was Chas’s life that was sacrificed,
the final blow having come from his father’s hands.

Chas’s mother had been beside herself over the loss
of her only son. In her grief stricken state she called upon forces
best left alone. All she wanted was to have her son back, she
didn't specify in what condition he would be in. Chas was restored
to full vitality three days later, but the man he had once been was
an empty shell of his former self. In the beginning, he couldn’t
control the natural beast within him. He was a soulless predator;
no longer a human man. His father had been his first kill upon
awakening in this new existence; his mother had watched.

Seeing the horror in his mother’s eyes and knowing
he was the one to put it there, Chas left his home and everything
else that had once been part of his living self. Several decades
later he was adopted into the LeMoyne clan taking the surname of
the clan’s leader, Ambrose. At that time it had only been the four
brothers, Ambrose, Xavier, Trueman and then Chas. It had taken
several more decades before the men had found their post-mortem
mates.

“
Chas,” Corrigan yelled over the music Chas
was listening to. He was ‘plugged in’ again with his little mp3
playing music device. He had swiped it off a kill several months
back. It wasn’t like the dead man needed it anymore. Ever since
then Chas had had the tiny buds permanently attached to his ear
drums. Corrigan found it irritating to once again find he was
talking to himself. He tried calling to him again to no
avail.

Chas was bobbing his head to the beat of the song.
His bottle green eyes dancing around, looking at everything, but
paying no attention to his brother. The volume was set loud enough
that the heavy beats of the newest number one R&B song to hit
the charts leaked out from the ear buds. Corrigan couldn’t guess
the specific song title, but he speculated that Chas had likely
bought the song long before it had become a sensation to the
masses.

Corrigan smiled to himself, speaking his thoughts
aloud he said. “I wonder what Helen’s wearing tonight.” He made an
appreciative growling sound deep in his throat, knowing that Chas
could hear him. “I wonder if it’ll be that delicate little silk top
with the deep dip in the cleavage and the tight denim skirt that
just barely covers her ......” Corrigan broke off, on purpose.

“
What the hell did you just say?” Chas’s green
eyes swung purposefully on his brother. There was a dark rage of
madness under the surface of his skin. Chas was fiercely possessive
of his woman. His mate, Helen had come into his post-life more than
forty years ago after her own death in which she was killed when a
civil rights campaign had ended in a bloody riot.

“
So you can hear me now, I guess.” Corrigan
gave his brother an arched stare. “Anytime you can unplug and join
the conversation, I’d appreciate it.”

Chas pulled out the ear buds, stuffing them and the
music device in his back pocket. “Be glad you’re my brother or
you’d be dead-dead right now. It doesn’t merit talking about
another man’s wife like that.” Dead-dead was an explanation to a
legally and medically dead person who was taken into the folds of
the truly dead; a death you don’t come back from.

“
I’ll keep that in mind for future reference.”
Corrigan made an evil smirk. “Next time I’ll just keep my sordid
thoughts to myself.” Chas looked like he was several heartbeats
from knocking Corrigan over the side of the bridge. That is, if his
heart actually still beat in his chest. It didn’t. Their hearts
made sluggish noises every now and then, but never a true beat like
the living had.

“
Calm down and stop looking at me like that.”
Corrigan shrugged his shoulders absently. “I was just rattling your
chains a bit. I don’t think of Helen like that; she’s like my
sister.” He came away from the side of the bridge to stand in front
of Chas.

Chas gave his brother a hard shove. “Don’t talk to
me about rattling chains, boy,” he growled. “You have no idea what
it’s like to actually have the weight of irons on your body, to
live every day knowing you’re less than the masters animal to
him.”

Chas’s father had chained him as a boy inside the
smokehouse for days when his father’s family and friends had come
for a long weekend visit. The heavy irons weighing the small body
down had left bruises on his emaciated flesh. Rarely giving him
enough to eat and drink, Chas very nearly died inside the stifling
confines of the building. Only with the tender care of his mother,
after he had been let loose, saved him from the madness that had
taken over his young mind.

Storing the boy away like dirty linens so no one of
consequence would know of his existence, Chas’s father was able to
distance himself from his only son. Anyone who saw the boy would
immediately recognize him as his father’s son; the eyes and the
shape of his face, even his ears, all were dead giveaways. Chas had
stared at the dead carcasses of the beasts hanging in the darkened
smokehouse, hating his father, hating himself for not being good
enough. Even now, when all of them were dead and gone, he still
felt the phantoms of his past; stealing away into his nightmares
and making him relive his life’s horrors.

Corrigan straightened quickly from the blow. Looking
down from his superior height, he said. “I know just as much about
chains and indignantly as you do. I’ve had the honor of donning my
own set for many decades. Don’t think for a minute that I don’t
know what your father did to you, or that I can’t relate.”

Chas snorted, turning away. Corrigan never related
any information about his past, living or otherwise. On a cold
winter night, twenty years ago, he had come knocking on their front
door, naked as the day he had been born. He hadn’t even had shoes
on. That night, he had joined the family, no questions asked. No
one questioned what he had been doing for the past one hundred some
odd years after his death, where he had come from, or how he had
come into this deathly animated existence. When anyone tried to
fish for answers, Corrigan responded with a flat voice, “I’m a
LeMoyne now, that’s all that matters. My past is as dead to me as I
am.” He never elaborated.

The men stood silent once again on the bridge.
Corrigan looked off into the downtown city while Chas stretched his
limbs. He was under the mind-set that he needed to stretch before
each meal otherwise he had terrible indigestion. Corrigan found it
a ridiculous reasoning system, but didn’t comment when Chas started
jogging in place, his knees coming up to his chest.

Corrigan leaned against a lamp post; waiting. He
could feel the minutes tick by in his mind, steadily moving forward
until the time he could venture forth over the bridge. From his
vantage point at the peak of the bridge he could make out the
lighted windows in the stores and restaurants in the downtown area.
If the living were wise they would be in their homes, but most
weren’t. The livings were always foolish, wrapped up in their
illusion of security. Just because they lived in a cement and
concrete world didn’t mean they were safe from the beasts of the
land. Corrigan and his family were proof of that.

“
Well, isn’t it my two favorite men in the
world?” a soft feminine voice called out from the darkness. “Have
you been waiting for me, boys?” Helen sauntered up the bridge,
coming from the east side, her gate casual and
unhurried.

Dressed in a pair of dark dyed blue jeans and a
black on black sweater set, she looked like a young living woman
taking a stroll. Her long midnight colored hair blended seamlessly
into the surrounding blackness. With a quick leap she landed softly
on the balls of her feet encased in her Nike running shoes. Helen
was anything but a normal living woman.

Helen reached up and kissed her deathly mate on his
cheek. Taking his hand, she turned to Corrigan who was watching the
two of them. She liked Corrigan, though she liked all her brothers
and sisters, there was a special place she reserved in her heart
for this special man. Corrigan was a simple man, who asked little
of his family except that they give him space.

Their home on the island was a massive structure
that had required demolishing several old homes and covered ten
acres of land. A high cement wall kept intruders out, not for the
family’s safety, but theirs. Inside the property lines were a two
story main house and three smaller guest houses which were of
average size for a standard size home in America. Ambrose and his
wife resided in the main house, the brothers and their wives
including Chas and Helen took residence in the guest homes.

Corrigan had asked to stay in the attic of the main
house, not needing an entire home just for himself. He explained to
them that he was accustomed to cramped small places. And the
spacious attic, though smaller than the guest house the family
offered to build him, was better than where he usually ended up.
Helen could only imagine what he must have meant by that.
Corrigan’s past was a terrible burden on his soul, a soul he
professed he no longer possessed in this existence.

“
Are you coming out with us, Helen?” Corrigan
answered her with a question of his own. Helen usually preferred
traveling with the girls. They had their own feeding practices that
either irritated the men or bored them. So the women of the family
had decided some time ago to venture out on their own. It usually
began with an outing to a bar or club, either in town or the
surrounding area. Then after an evening of girlish frivolity, they
would get down to business.

“
Is that an invitation, Corry?” Helen
responded with yet another question. Helen was the first person to
refer to Corrigan as Corry, and the only one given the right to do
so.

“
Cor doesn’t invite anyone to roam with him.”
Chas interjected, stretching his arms over his head, and rotating
his upper chest. “I’m just here to see that he keeps the numbers
down to a minimum.” That wasn’t entirely true. Chas and Corrigan
had been roaming together since he had arrived in their city. At
first he had been assigned to follow Corrigan to make sure he
abided by the rules the others and his family had agreed upon years
before. Later they had struck a bond between them, brothers in
heart and mind, if not in blood.

“
But he’ll invite me,” Helen contradicted.
“Won’t you, Corry?” Helen smiled over at her brother. Her
greenish-blue eyes were like radiant jewels set in a classically
beautiful face. Helen’s parentage, like Chas had been of mixed
ancestry. But unlike Chas, both her father and mother had adored
their daughter.

“
Of course you’re invited, Hell,” Corrigan
said, using his nick-name for her. She might appear to others to be
a sweet young woman in her mid-twenties, but she was a little demon
from hell when she was riled. She was quick and deadly when she was
on the hunt for a kill and could take down a grown man twice her
size.

“
Well, I’m starving. What are we waiting for?”
Helen took her husband’s hand, wrapping it around her as she leaned
in to him. “I’ve never been out with you boys before. Do you have a
favorite pick-up spot? Margaret Ann and I sometimes like to hang
out near the bars on St. George Street.”

“
We’re not scouting women, Helen,” Chas
retorted with a frown. “And the first rule if you’re going to roam
with us is that Cor and I will find the kill. You stay back until I
call you.” He brushed his other hand over her forehead, brushing
strands of her dark hair off her forehead. “Is that
clear?”

“
I’m not an infant,” Helen groused. “I can
make my own kill, thank you very much. But I’m glad to hear you’re
not scouting out women. If I did find you doing such a thing I’d
have to kill you and I don’t feel inclined to break-in another
husband.”

Chas frowned at first before his face broke into a
teasing grin. “So you think you’ve house broken me, do you?” he
bantered. “And I didn’t say you were incapable of a kill. I just
prefer not to have you do it tonight. We’re not on very good terms
with the others and Ambrose is having us take less kills because of
it. The whiny souls across the way are having a fit and taking it
out on us. Seems they’re reconsidering our contract we made all
those years ago, maybe even rescinding it all together. Who knows?
But we’re cutting back, so let Corrigan and I take care of
tonight’s meal.”

Helen reached out and touched his face, rubbing his
cheek with her graceful fingers. “As long as you don’t make me do
the dishes,” she teased him back. Rising on to her tippy toes she
kissed his cheek, moving over to take his lips. She breathed
against his mouth. “You are so totally house broken, sweetheart.
You just don’t realize it.” Then she screamed as he picked her up,
swinging her into his arms as he deepened the kiss.

Corrigan sighed, looking away from the happy couple.
Though he had grown accustomed to seeing his adoptive families
frequent displays of tender affection for each other he wasn’t as
completely unmoved as he would like to be. Since arriving on their
doorstep years ago, he had been accepted into the flock, into the
family, unconditionally and without mistrust on their part. Being
alone for so many decades, he had little memory of what it was like
to behave in polite society, to be with others of his kind and not
revert back to the animalistic monster he had been reduced to for
so long.