Grave Danger (25 page)

Clarissa concentrated on reading as she heard Leah’s
soft breathing in the background. She didn’t seem to have any
trouble falling asleep on a park bench in front of a cemetery. But
then Leah was quite immune to the strangeness of the paranormal;
hanging out with dead people and all that. She turned her head to
look back at the living woman to confirm that she was indeed under
the spell of Morpheus. Her dreams were like little visual vignettes
that Clarissa could watch for hours, but she chose not to out of
respect for Leah’s privacy.

Facing forward once again, Clarissa blew a long
stream of cool air from her mouth. The night was not overly muggy,
but still the air in Florida was always saturated even during the
fall. Clarissa’s cool breath caused the particles of water in the
air to drop in temperature, turning it into a flow of fog that
twirled and danced in front of her. She moved her hands, directing
the fog to swirl around her like a blanket then out and away from
her. She watched as it floated down the street toward the
bridge.

She wondered what Corrigan was doing right now. In
the quiet streets of St. Augustine, Clarissa let her mind wander
far away from her as she reached out across the river. If Corrigan
was there on Anastasia Island, could she find him in his mind?
Would he let her touch that part of him he kept hidden even from
himself?

Clarissa knew she was a fool, but in her daydreams
she could push aside that rational part of herself and just let her
fantasies take root. As fantasies went, hers defied all logic and
sense. In them she wanted Corrigan LeMoyne to accept her as she was
and when he looked her in the eyes she only wanted to see heat and
love, not cold bitterness and contempt.

You don’t even know him.

That rational voice inside was always a downer to
her fantasies. But it was true. She barely knew him and what she
did know about him where all the things she hated about his kind;
vicious animals. The rest he kept locked away inside his heart; if
he even had a heart worth beating.

It was all that kisses fault. If only he had kept
his hands and lips to himself she could have gone on to continue
hating him. But now, it was all she could do to keep her resolve
that he and his kind needed to be exterminated. She had to think of
the safety of the livings in her city, her people and the S.S. who
served them. He was the other and their kind should be hated.

It was really hard to hate the very being that felt
like the other half of you. Clarissa blew another cool breath into
the night air. With it she whispered a single word.

Corrigan.

***∞***

Corrigan had walked the beach many times over the
years. It was here on this very beach where his puny little wooden
boat had made landfall after weeks on the Atlantic Ocean. He had
spent most of his life on the high seas. As a sailor he had
traveled to exotic places of lore; found himself in the dark
mysterious worlds where the natives would sooner slice your head
off than welcome you onto their land. And it was in the wild
islands of the Caribbean were Corrigan had lost his soul; where
they had made him a monster.

He had been out here for hours, pacing up and down
the sandy shores until his feet and back ached and he was forced to
sit down, his breath coming out in great huffs. Not because he was
short of breathe, but because he was losing control.

Then he laid himself down on the beach, flat on his
back in the cool white sand, the water’s edge lapping only a few
inches away from his bare feet. As he lay there in the stillness,
he imagined what it would be like to have Clarissa lying next to
him to enjoy the view. Would she like the beach as much as he did?
Would she play in the surf like an alluring sea nymph? With her
dark air and pale skin, she had the look of a beguiling angel; a
benevolent creature who reminded him of the beast he was.

In his fantasies, she didn’t look at him with
mistrust or suspicion. She looked at him as if he were only a man,
not a monster, a man like he had once been; complete. It had been
decades since he had ever dreamed of being the normal human man he
had been in life. But even in his fantasies he never dreamed of
finding his other half. Such dreams were beyond even Corrigan’s own
imaginings. And as the fates twisted aged hands would dictate, his
other half looked to be the very death of him. If Clarissa had her
way, it would be she who would lay the final blow, ending his
miserable existence.

Corrigan held a fist full of cold sand, letting it
spill through the cracks between his fingers. Clarissa was like the
sand, cool and bright under the moon filled sky. And she wasn’t
something a creature like he could hold on to. And if he let her
she would bury him, and not just up to his neck.

He cursed himself as a masochistic fool for ever
thinking about a woman who wanted to see him permanently dead. But
even as he told himself this, he knew that she was more than a
deadly adversary. Clarissa was a woman of strong convictions and
loyalty; he could see that after only one encounter with her. But
even still, he knew next to nothing about her. She was as elusive
as the flowing sand between his fingers.

He stared up at the full moon in the sky, its quiet
radiance a nightlight to a sleeping world. In all his life or
animated death he never wanted more than at this moment to share
the night with someone. Someone who would chase away the demons and
ghouls of his past, and for a moment in this existence make him
feel whole and alive. More than anything he wanted Clarissa to be
that someone.

A cloud slipped past the moon, drawing darkness on
the earth below; darkness like death. And as Corrigan closed his
eyes he painted the face of a woman with long flowing hair and eyes
like the changing sea. If he could, she would be his muse and he
would paint her into his world because only in his art would he
ever have the privilege of seeing her standing next to him and not
at his back ready to strike.

He breathed out her name like a prayer to the
heavens above, though none of the divine would ever hear the
prayers of the damned and soulless. For how could someone as flawed
as he was be given peace in this world? Not bloody likely. He had
more chances of being struck by a burst of lightning and then as he
lay in shock in the street, be swiftly run over by a car driven by
a crazed Hollywood celebrity. That sounded more plausible than a
fanciful dream of finding peace or anything remotely like
happiness.

Corrigan found himself once again on the peak of the
bridge overlooking the old city below. His family didn’t roam the
city on Sundays. A day of rest, a time when many of the living set
aside the toil of their lives to remember their faith; whatever
that might be. In truth it didn’t really matter what day they
choose as long as the intentions were the same. Corrigan had a
difficult time understanding the faith system of the livings. But
for them, perhaps there was still hope.

The night breeze blew across the bridge bringing
with it a smell he was all too familiar with. It was the smell of
life ebbing away, sucked up by the lure of death. It was like
smelling a food that’s scent was imbedded into ones memories, the
scent of it bringing forward the time when it first crossed the
senses. This smell brought forward the ever present memory of
Corrigan’s first kill. Everyone remembers their first. For him, it
both disgusted and excited him, to smell the sweet fragrance of
living essence. It was priceless.

I want it.

***∞***

A scream rent the quiet night air, slicing through
the atmosphere and disturbing the solitude of a sleeping world. At
once Clarissa became aware of it. Rising quickly to her feet she
turned to find Leah awake and staring at her, the look of living
fear on her face. The living had much to fear in this world.

“
Did you hear that?” Clarissa asked Leah,
though she needn’t have bothered. Of course she had heard that
blood curdling scream. Even in a deep dreamless sleep such a sound
could pierce through the subconscious, setting off the alarm
bells.

“
Yes,” Leah nodded, turning to stare down the
street toward the bridge. “It came from that way. I’m sure of it.”
Leah was quickly on her feet, not to run but to go after that
horrible sound.

Clarissa picked up her back-pack, hefting it over
her shoulder. In the next instant she was off, Leah a few steps
behind her. Clarissa was moving so quickly, her mind focused on
getting to that sound, that she wasn’t aware that her feet barely
touched the ground as she moved. Her only objective was to confront
the creature that was stalking that living person and take it
down.

***∞***

Corrigan bent over the frightened woman, her neck a
blood stained mess of torn flesh. Her eyes held that vacant stare
of coming death, when the world became small and tight. It was
taking her farther down that cold tunnel with each drop of free
flowing blood, the life essence of the living escaping with it.

He touched his hands to her throat as more of it
bubbled and dripped with her last breaths. It would be so easy to
let it have her and to take what he could from her last threads of
life. But this was not his kill, nor would he have ever targeted an
innocent woman. But staring into the face of a banquet it was
difficult to remain in control.

Corrigan could stray outside the lines just this
once and be unaffected. He had no soul to seek penance for. So what
did it matter if he simply finished her off.

Corrigan sensed her presence moments before he was
flung back, finding himself airborne for several seconds before
landing into the side of a cement piling. He had a thick skull, but
even still the force of the blow shook every brain cell in his head
as it made contact with the piling.

Clarissa had seen only a dark shadow over the figure
of a woman. But in an instant she recognized the beautiful demon
hovering over the living woman. Corrigan. In an instant she reacted
to the scene, expelling a force that knocked him away from the
woman, landing him several feet and into a rather large cement
piling near the bridge.

Rushing to the side of the still woman, she gazed
down into a most horrific scene. Her throat was battered and as she
breathed more of her life’s essence slipped out with the blood. It
saturated the ground around her turning the sun bleached asphalt
street black.

“
What should I do?” Leah exclaimed, coming to
kneel beside the woman. As Leah looked down into the ashen face of
the dying woman, she at once recognized her. It was Candice Snow,
an S.S. member and sister to Mary-Ann Gills who had been attached
and killed merely a week ago. Candice was sure to follow her
beloved sister’s fate if something wasn’t done soon to save
her.

“
Clarissa,” Leah said her friends name as she
watched her hover intently over the living woman. After a few
agonizing long seconds she answered.

Clarissa had almost completely forgotten about Leah.
She recognized Ms. Snow from the town meeting when she and another
S.S. member, Michael Burn, had sat quietly grieving in front of
her. It had stayed with her these last few days helping to keep her
resolve to destroy the monsters that had hurt these innocent
people, burning hot and bright inside her. Clarissa was willing to
do practically anything to keep this woman from joining her sister
in the here-after. Anything.

“
Put your fingers to her neck and try to hold
the loose flesh closed. The best thing we can do right now is keep
what little blood she has left inside her body.” She looked into
the face of her living friend, finding the young woman relatively
calm in the face of such horror.

Clarissa watched as Leah tentatively touched the
open wounds on Candice’s torn throat. If her fingers trembled a
little and her face lost some of her life giving blood it wasn’t
enough to make her draw away. She kept a gentle but firm hold over
the wound. It wasn’t enough to save this poor woman, perhaps only
giving them a few seconds. But in life, every second counted.

“
Ms. Snow,” Clarissa called in a low hypnotic
voice. “Can you hear me?”

Candice didn’t respond as was expected of someone
whose very life was slipping away far too quickly. Clarissa tried
again. “I’m Clarissa Schofield. We met at the town meeting. Do you
remember me? Leah, lean forward so she can see your face.” Leah did
as she was instructed.

“
Ms. Snow,” Leah forced a smile on her face,
but in her eyes there was evidence of tears. “It’s me, Leah. You’re
going to be okay. We’re here now and Clarissa and I are going to
make sure no one else hurts you. You need to stay with us for a
little while longer. Can you hear me?”

There was no response from the deathly pale woman.
Her eyes remained fixed on a point that none of them could see. In
her eyes Clarissa could see the shadow of death. Clarissa couldn’t
recall actually seeing him, even during her own brush with him.
Death never revealed much of himself to the world. He preferred to
give only a glimpse of his true self. It was speculated by many
that he was beautiful and fair to look upon, but only those who had
felt his cold kiss could tell you that.

A shadow fell upon the women in the street, but it
wasn’t the result of clouds roving over the moon. It was the shadow
of an inflictor of death, deaths servant. Clarissa looked up into
the face of a creature that was as deadly as he was beautiful. The
paranormal world was an upside down version of the normal world
Clarissa had thought she lived in. Where beauty hid evil and those
that appeared young were ancient while those who looked older were
freshly new. It was bizarre and it was strange. Then again, what
was normal except someone’s warped ideal standard that no one could
live up to?