Grave Danger (45 page)

“
Thanks,” Clarissa shouted back as she held
the drink to her lips. The glass swirled with a red liquid that
looked like some sweet dyed syrup. It fit well with the
theme.

What did not fit in with the dark theme where the
four women in their candy, rainbow inspired outfits. They stuck out
more than a grown man at a Jonas Brothers concert.

“
Have you ever been in this club before?”
Clarissa asked Corrigan’s sisters as they each held an identical
drink to hers on the table in front of them. They shook their head,
no, all while grinning at her, their elongated canines flashing
white for a moment from their brightly glossed lips.

That was the ‘in’ thing these days. And though
everyone in this club dressed the part in dark colors, likely
sporting tiny teeth attachments of their own, these candy colored
confections of womanhood were the real deal. Clarissa watched as
Debora pulled something small out of her sparkly rhinestone covered
purse. It was a vial of some sort and when the lights flashed over
their heads she could see it was a tiny vial of rich, dark blood.
She always imagined that blood to them was like chocolate to the
normal person, addicting and it came in varying quality and
design.

Debora splashed a drop in each of the women’s
cocktail glasses, her own being a non-alcoholic version of the same
thing. Lastly her hand stopped suspended, hovering over Clarissa’s
for a moment. Clarissa felt their collective gazes on her as Debora
held the vial of human liquid over her glass.

Consuming the blood of a human was a sin. At least
that was what she had believed most of her life. For a moment
Clarissa had the image of the black and white cow from the Chick
filet ads telling the customers to eat more chicken. That was what
humans had been promoting all along. Eat the dumb chicken, not me.
But in this world, they were the ‘dumb chickens’.

Clarissa nodded her head, watching as the viscous
fluid plopped into her already red swirling drink. But you could
easily see the difference between the real stuff and the syrup. The
women watched her as she slowly brought it her mouth. And as the
blood mixed with the alcohol, hitting her taste buds, she instantly
understood what all the madness was over.

It was fresh, not from a bag from the chilled units
at a blood bank. Frozen blood likely tasted just like frozen meat
stored in the freezer, the freezing process destroying some of the
flavors. Not that most humans would be able to tell the difference.
The sweetness of the drink cut some of the metallic taste, but it
was still there, coating her tongue like a living thing.

It was absolutely spectacular.

“
There,” Maude said, taking a deep drink of
her cocktail. “Now, you are one of the girls.”

“
But you still don’t trust me, do you?”
Clarissa asked her truthfully. This was the first time she had been
with Corrigan’s sisters without him. This was probably the best
chance she’d get to make them see she wasn’t the woman she’d been
in life.

“
If you were us, would you trust you?” Helen
said, fingering the rim of her cocktail glass. “We all know what
you did when you were alive, you destroyed people like us. Can you
blame us for not being the friendly welcoming party to one of the
only beings who could literally send us back to our
graves?”

“
Trust goes both ways, Clarissa.” Margaret Ann
held up her glass, watching as the flashing lights from above hit
the contents of her drink, catching the subtle movements in the
living blood; the essence. “How can we trust you if we can’t be
sure you completely trust us? We are after all the monsters in this
game. Only a fool sides with the beast.”

“
Then I must be a fool,” Clarissa stated,
putting heat and passion into her voice, “Because I’m absolutely
crazy for the beast.”

“
Alright, ‘Belle’, we give you that one,”
Maude said, making a reference to the story of Beauty and the
Beast. She puckered her glossy lips in thought, staring at Clarissa
in an odd look that reminded her of Cyrus when he gave her that
intense stare. “You do care for my brother. More than I think is
good for you or any of us. If you know his history then you know he
hasn’t had much in the way of human affection. Nor does he give
himself away so easily. With you he seems a different man. Even
around us, and we’ve known him for years. He’s shown less
constraint with us and I can assume it is your doing.”

“
I would never hurt your brother,” Clarissa
said to the group of women. “And I’m learning to trust you, just as
you are trying to let yourself trust me. I don’t expect a welcome
party, nor am I oblivious to the truth that we were once enemies.
But I don’t feel like I’m that woman any more. My death has given
me a new set of eyes.”

“
Those are pretty words,” Debora spoke up,
twirling her Isadora inspired scarf around in her hands. “But words
are just that, words to fill the empties on a page. But it will be
your actions that will make us see if you can be
trusted.”

“
Fair enough,” Clarissa said. Then she thought
of something. “If you want trust then I will give you something
about myself that not even Corrigan knows yet.” That caused their
collective mascara and shadowed eyes to light up in sudden
interest. They leaned forward in the booth or closer to Clarissa as
she decided the best way to word this secret
declaration.

“
Yes,” Helen prompted after several
seconds.

Clarissa mentally cleared the blockage in her vocal
chords. This would indeed be a statement fit for any eager gossiper
and would reveal her trust of these women.

“
There is a bokor that the Eidolon community
has been able to convince to come to our city and see to the matter
of all of you.” She watched their expression closely. Debora and
Margaret Ann frowned and looked to one another. Helen nodded her
head waiting to hear more. Maude’s expression remained blank of
anything other than what could be called feigned interest as if she
already knew what Clarissa was going to say.

“
But what no one knows, not even Corrigan, is
that this death bokor used to be my teacher. He was a university
professor known for being eccentric, but he was so charming and
handsome that people forgave him. Olivier taught the craft of vodou
that had been taught to him by his grandmother. He said I had a
natural gift unlike any he’d ever seen in a person who wasn’t born
into the faith. We became close, going over the line of teacher and
student until I convinced myself that I was in love with him. He
was truly evil, he enjoyed hurting the monsters we were sent out to
destroy because we believed it was the right thing to do. But he
went too far and I couldn’t take it anymore. We started arguing a
lot and I refused to go out on more and more cases. I told him I
didn’t love him anymore and that I would never marry a hateful
creature like him. He got angry and used my dagger against
me.”

Clarissa lifted her top so they could see the pale
flesh of her stomach. The grinning skull stared out at them, a
happy thing waiting to be reunited with the dagger. “It looks like
the one on Ambrose’s shoulder, doesn’t it?” Maude and Margaret Ann
shook their heads nodding a yes at the same time.

“
He murdered me and almost completely
destroyed me completely.” Clarissa put her shirt back down. “But I
was – am strong and I didn’t want to move on to the next plan of
existence. So I am a ghost because I was selfish and wanted more of
this life.”

“
We are all selfish,” Maude said. Her eyes
almost softened as she stared at Clarissa. “I’m glad that you told
us this secret. We will keep it as long as you want us to. Won’t we
girls?” They each nodded in agreement.

Something caught Maude’s attention as her eyes
shifted to a mass of people across from them. Helen touched her arm
and Maude nodded a wordless message to say that she was doing
something and needed a moment.

Shouting could be heard, which was odd because the
music should have been too loud, making conversations blur together
into a single mass. But Clarissa could hear it too, a single
argument sticking out in the overlapping conversations. She closed
her eyes and reached out to the heart of the noise. It was a man
and a woman, he was older and she was scared, her heart racing
inside her frail chest, her blood pumping speedily in and out of
the organ while her brain fired off endless messages to a body too
broken to accept them.

“
He wants her to leave with him, but she
doesn’t want to.” Maude’s eyes were shut, her face relaxed as she
concentrated. “He likes to use ‘lost ones’, those that are frail
and without family or loved ones that would miss them if they were
gone. If he hurts her it will be because she wasn’t listening and
it would be her fault; not his if she dies.”

“
How many of them have there been?” Margaret
Ann asked as she reached out to touch her sister’s hand that rested
limply on the table.

“
I see so many of them, I can’t count them
all.” Her mouth tightened and her eyes too. “Their faces are so
young, some of them not long out of childhood. The horror on their
faces as he looks down at them, the light escaping from their eyes
as they lose consciousness, then his face is red with their blood
as he licks their dead skin.” She shuddered as her eyes opened and
she was once again looking toward the other side of the
room.

Maude leaped onto the table and off of it, managing
not to knock over any of the glasses. She turned to look at
Clarissa, a heated intense stare that made her almost afraid.

“
Come,” was all she said and Clarissa was
following her. Pushing through the mass of people, they came to the
man and woman still arguing, paying little attention to the two
otherworldly creatures approaching.

“
Excuse me,” Maude said to the man. He was
dressed in a black dress shirt and black dress pants, a skinny tie
decorated with tiny white spiders hung loose around his throat. One
silver spider dangled from one ear lobe.

His head whipped around, his eyes widening in
surprise as he found Maude standing next to him. She was a stunning
beauty with her hair loose and falling in soft waves behind her,
but anyone with eyes could see she didn’t fit the part of this
club. The man’s eyes raked her from head to toe and his expression
read exactly that.

“
What do you want?” he barked out in a
gravelly voice. It wasn’t his real voice, just one he thought fit
with his image tonight.

“
Could I speak to you in private for a
moment?” she said in a syrupy sweet voice. Maude turned to give the
shaking living woman a warm smile. The woman blinked at her, wide
eyed as if she was looking at a ghost. She wasn’t, she had yet to
notice Clarissa standing so close to her.

Clarissa leaned forward, close to the scared women’s
ear. She was young, far too young to be living on her own and
falling under the deceptive wing of this monster; one that was of
the living persuasion.

“
You don’t have to go with him. Do not trust
him. He is not what he seems.” Clarissa slipped something into the
women’s clutched hands. It was a card with a number she could call,
a support hot-line.

When Clarissa glanced up, Maude was leading the man
into the back of the club. She caught up to them in time to watch
them walk out the steel back doors into the dark night.

Clarissa followed them out, letting the heavy doors
close silently in their wake. This man would never cross this
threshold again. At least not in this life and if he believed in
karma it would be only as the lowliest insect or a politician,
whichever one was worse.

“
What do you want?” the man said snidely,
folding his arms over his chest in an aggressive posture. He was
used to women cowering in his presence or fawning over him in
adoration. Maude did none of that.

Maude sauntered up to him slowly, so close that only
a breath of air was between them. She flashed him her canines, a
quick peek to show him the beast inside her. He actually smiled,
thinking it was a kinky thing and not the first clue to his quickly
approaching demise.

“
I wondered at first,” he said with a grin.
“What with the outfit and all, but I see you’re just like me.” He
flashed his own set of points, which were very expensively put in
by a doctor who charged a hefty price tag for the look.

Maude smiled a Cheshire grin at the man, showing her
beautiful yet deadly teeth to the man. He was obviously dumb
because everyone knew that when an animal showed its teeth, it
wasn’t friendly, it was a sign of aggression.

In this case it meant that he would never have need
for his expressive teeth improvements. Maude was on the man before
he realized she wasn’t playing around. His neck was thrown back by
the force and a quick snap took out a large section of it revealing
tendons and meat, blood gushing out in splendid acrobatic
maneuvers. He fell in a fleshy heap onto the dark cement, his mouth
moving wordlessly, his eyes wide with fright.

He wore a similar expression to those of the women
he had hurt. Now it was his turn. Maude crouched over him, letting
a drop of his own blood drip onto his ashen face.

“
I will never be like you,” she whispered.
“You won’t ever hurt an innocent again.” Then she bent down even
further to place a kiss on his forehead, leaving behind the imprint
of her lips in blood on his skin. “May the good lord have mercy on
your retched soul, for he is both merciful and wise in these ways,”
she said as she stood up and away from his body.