Grave Danger (37 page)

Corrigan came up to meet her on the stairs. “I don’t
know,” he answered with a tender smile as he lifted her up and over
his shoulders as he carried her up the rest of the way back to the
attic. “He hasn’t been very friendly with me the past few days.
Maybe he was looking for my brother and thought he was in his
office.”

He set her back down on the floor once they’d
reached his attic room. Clarissa straightened her t-shirt which had
risen up and twisted a bit from being hoisted over his shoulder.
“Thanks for the caveman trick,” she quipped. “Do you do any other
tricks?”

It was as she was fixing her shirt that he got a
quick look at her stomach. “Wait,” he said, reaching out and
forcing her shirt back up again to reveal the smooth skin of her
stomach. “What is this?” He fingered the raised skin just over her
belly button. It was the mark of a skull just like the one branded
onto the inside of his wrist. “Who did this to you?” all
seriousness returned.

“
I’m not sure,” she answered, feeling
butterflies beat their tiny wings against the inside of her stomach
as Corrigan touched her body, sending chills through her entire
system. “It only showed up a few days ago. It looks like yours,
doesn’t it? Do you think when I touched the dagger it put its mark
on me as well.”

“
No,” he said. The mark couldn’t have been
made by the touch of the dagger. If it had it would have burned
horribly at that moment, just as it had burned him. “Touching the
dagger only revealed what was already there to begin with. Someone
else put the mark on you. Touching the dagger made your system
remember what was done to it. Ambrose has a similar mark on his
left shoulder. He finally revealed the origins behind it after I
had shown him my mark.”

Ambrose had glared down at Corrigan’s wrist, his
fist so tight around his brother that his fingers had turned white.
He’d thrown his wrist away on an expletive and walked back to his
desk where he sat down with a great sigh.

“
How did this happen?” he began, placing his
elbows on the table he leaned heavily upon his hands.

Corrigan at first hadn’t been sure if Ambrose meant
‘how did he receive the mark’ or whether the question had been
rhetorical, as in ‘how did I let this woman affect my family so?’
In either case Corrigan spoke his thoughts.

“
It is the mark from an instrument of the
death bokor, a dark order that has been designed to kill all
paranormal infestations on this planet. Clarissa was one of them in
life and has somehow been able to retain much of her abilities even
in death.”

Ambrose had drummed his fingers against his slightly
scruffy chin. “And who is in possession of this dagger now?” His
eyes had looked up then, giving Corrigan a measuring stare.

“
I do,” Corrigan informed him. “Clarissa
believes she has hidden it from me, but I replaced her dagger with
another of similar shape. She hasn’t, as of yet, noticed the
difference.” Clarissa had thought to keep it safe, hidden away from
him, but he knew that the best way to know for sure was to keep it
where he could keep an eye on it. He knew nothing of the origins of
this ‘Mrs. Connors’, nor did he trust her for the simple fact that
it was in her home that Clarissa had found the instrument of
destruction. “She didn’t know how it would react by her touch as I
held it. It placed this mark on my wrist just as its twin is on
your shoulder.”

Ambrose’s brows had then knitted together in a
frown. “And how do you know of my mark? I do not remember showing
it you.”

Anyone else would have been intimated by the rancor
in Ambrose’s voice. Corrigan however, knew the truth of Ambrose and
that put them on equal grounds when it came to revealing his
knowing of the mark. “Because I know you better than you think,
brother.” A faint grin pulled at the corners of his mouth, “And the
fact that I was there when Margaret Ann was tending to your wounds,
I was the one who carried you into your rooms. You don’t remember
because I gave you an excessive amount of liquor to keep you from
pulling open the stitches.”

They’d had a run in with a shape-shifter that had
gone mad and was more than slightly addle-minded or sick. The large
panther had gone after Ambrose because it mistook him for someone
it knew and in this instance hated. Truman and Corrigan had put the
sad creature down quickly enough, but Ambrose had suffered a nasty
gash along his left arm and part of his chest. Animal bites needed
to be looked after quickly, diseases and other nasty side-effects
could happen from just a single bit from one of them.

Ambrose had shaken his head as if trying to forget
the memory of the attack. “So now that you sport a similar mark you
are free to ask me how I received mine.”

He’d spent many lifetimes keeping this secret hidden
from his family. Now the truth would be revealed. It was almost
comical that Corrigan would share in its revealing, because the
love of a woman had been and would be both of their downfalls.

Corrigan touched the grinning skull mark over
Clarissa’s stomach. It was a burn that would remain there,
permanently, forever; or until the dagger was satisfied. She was
watching him as he stroked her skin, unease in her eyes.

“
What are you trying to say, Cor? Do you think
another bokor did this to me?” A horrible thought flashed through
her mind. She saw herself, a fuzzy, blurred image of herself as a
living woman arguing with a man. Then in the next instant she was
on the ground, his distorted face over her body, the dagger that
had ended her life poised over her stomach. Blood ran everywhere,
rivers running in all directions from a body that was fast cooling.
In the next instant the vision was gone replaced by the usual blank
void.

“
You already know that,” he said, releasing
her shirt and letting it hide the mark from the world. “You’ve
always known the truth Clarissa you just didn’t want to face it. Do
you want to know how Ambrose received his mark?”

She nodded, finding her voice wasn’t up to a verbal
response.

“
It begins when a man fell in love with the
wrong kind of woman,” Corrigan began, taking her hand and leading
her to a couch that had seen better days and more springs to hold
up the cushions.

“
That’s not a very nice beginning,” Clarissa
remarked with a frown.

Corrigan brushed his hand against her hair. “It
isn’t a nice story.” Sitting down next to her on the couch, he sat
back, his arms spread wide to encompass the back the old leather
couch. Clarissa sat back too, her head resting on the curve of his
right arm.

“
I want to know,” Clarissa whispered, sensing
the intensity of this story required it.

“
A man can live only so long before he makes
the grand mistake that will almost always change his life forever
in the worst sort of way and love is almost always the culprit.”
Corrigan grunted when he received a sudden punch in his sides. “I’m
just reciting how it was told to me, not my own thoughts on the
matter.” He received a gentle pat along his side in answer to his
defense on the matter of love.

“
To make a rather long and sad story slightly
shorter I’ll skip some parts. My brother fell in love with a woman
who should have been off limits to him. He had barely survived the
massacre of his settlement several years earlier when the French
Huguenot settlers of St. Augustine were brutally slaughtered when
word had reached the Spanish King that the French had made claim on
La Florida. Almost all of them were put to death except the few who
were spared for their skills or converted to Catholicism. Ambrose
was one of the few who escaped either fate. He later returned to
St. Augustine despite his history and became a well respected man
in the community, though none would outright admit an association
with him.”

Corrigan knew he was butchering the story and that
he left out much of the important side notes in order not to bore
Clarissa. Ambrose’s life story was more complicated and would take
longer than several paragraphs in a book to encompass the full
knowledge of him. Corrigan pressed forward with the tale; the last
but most important parts of a life cut too short.

“
A fair young Spanish woman caught his eye.
But as always happens in these stories, word reached the ears of
the girl’s father. The matter was taken to the community officials
and it was deemed that Ambrose was trying to use the delusions of a
young woman’s love to sway her heart against God and the true
religion. When the girl was questioned she agreed that Ambrose had
tried to turn her from God and her blessed faith. Ambrose was hung
that evening, the love of his young life watching as the rope
dropped.”

Corrigan touched his own throat, remembering his
death. If he looked closely enough he could see a faint white line
that ran across the area of his throat where it connected with his
chest. Even now he could almost remember the way the blood and
life’s energy had spilled from his throat to paint the sand in his
death.

He felt Clarissa’s fingers as they moved to touch
the exact same spot, pulling away his hand and placing a kiss on
the warm pads of his fingers before tucking his hand in her smaller
cooler one. He rubbed the back of his hand along her soft cold palm
as he continued.

“
He returned to consciousness along the
alligator infested waters of the St. Johns River. He doesn’t
remember how he got there or who returned him to life. All he knew
was that he was somehow different from what he had been
before.”

Corrigan glanced down to see Clarissa’s expression.
“I’ll skip the part where he got retribution against those who had
taken his life from him.”

Clarissa’s mouthed a ‘thank-you’.

“
It goes without saying that it was difficult
for Ambrose to adjust to his new existence. Not only that, he was
limited to only a small population of livings in St. Augustine to
take sustenance from. His presence in the city was quick to spread
and in superstitious times it was easier for people to accept that
a monster lived in their city. He had to move several times to new
cities to keep from depleting entire settlements. It was while
traveling the country that he met my brothers. We didn’t come back
permanently to St. Augustine until only recently.”

Clarissa knew about some of this already from
conversations with Henry and Eleanor. Corrigan had come to the
States not long after his family had staked a permanent claim on
the city by buying up most of the beach property, which expanded
several miles north and south of St. Augustine.

“
Back when bokors were readily available, the
number of flesh-eaters remained low. Even today we are small
minority in the paranormal world.”

“
The mark upon his shoulder, like yours and
mine, came from the dagger known as the
Baiser de mort
or the Kiss of Death. It was an
instrument used by the bokors of that time to extract the heart of
the flesh-eater. A way they believed would put the creature back in
its grave. But luckily the bokor was inexperienced and by this time
Ambrose had lived many lifetimes, enough to be too much for the
bokor. He escaped without much injury except for the
mark.”

“
The dagger seeks a new death to add to its
strength whether the wieldier is competent to take the life or not.
If the life is taken then the mark is removed and the dagger is
satisfied. If not it remains until another can finish the task.”
Corrigan moved to touch her stomach, holding his hand lightly over
the mark that they both knew was concealed beneath her
clothing.

The knowledge that she had been touched by this
dagger and knowing that someone she had likely known and been
friends with had sought to murder her fueled Corrigan’s hatred of
bokors.

“
Your mark remains on your body because the
bokor who sought to end your existence failed. Though your flesh
has moved on, much of you remain intact in this world. Which means
someone is out there who may or may not know you haven’t moved on
to the next world.”

Clarissa held her hand over his on her stomach. She
saw in his eyes that the truth of her death affected him as much as
it had affected her. She shadowy faced man had been a bokor just
like her. Corrigan hated all bokors and in some ways he had a right
to.

“
Ambrose has existed all these centuries with
it still on his body and nothing has happened to him.” Clarissa
said, trying to steer them away from the possibility that she could
be taken away him; that a bokor was still out there with a need to
see to her extermination. “Besides the dagger can’t work on me
anymore, I do not have a body to kill. Perhaps it revealed that I
was marked, but that doesn’t mean anything will come of
it.”

“
Maybe,” Corrigan half-heartedly agreed. Just
because she didn’t exist in flesh and blood did not mean that she
could not be harmed. “I can only tell you from Ambrose’s experience
and perhaps it has been a small blessing to have the mark upon his
body. Now whenever a death bokor is near him with an intention to
kill, the mark warns him of their intentions.”

Clarissa studied Corrigan’s face, remembering her
first meeting with his family. Ambrose had seemed reserved while
inside she’d seen he’d been raging. Did the mark burn when she was
near? “No,” he said as if sensing her thought patterns. “He knew he
could trust you, if only a little, because at that moment you had
no intention of using your gifts against us.”

“
I never would,” she assured him as she
reached up and kissed him on the chin. “I would never use my gifts
against you. I’ve already seen enough to know that no good can come
from them.”