Grave Danger (46 page)

Clarissa turned as the door behind her opened
revealing the other sisters. They were silent as they made a
procession line toward the body of the dying man. He was still
breathing, but just barely.

Debora was the first to bend down, taking an arm and
bringing it to her mouth. She watched Clarissa as she bit down,
blood running in little rivers from the open wound down on the
ground. It was like a challenge, like when med-school students eat
their lunches while standing around corpses. It was a challenge to
see if Clarissa could stand to watch them eat another human
being.

The other women gathered around the man, taking
appendages into their mouths, some of them watching Clarissa,
others focused on the meal in front of them. It was quiet except
for the occasional noise from the almost dead man. Little by little
he was disappearing, turning to nothingness just has he had done to
his victims.

Clarissa’s cell phone jangled loudly in her clutch
purse. She quickly pulled it out thinking it was Corrigan. But when
she read the number it was Jackson’s name scrolling across the
screen.

“
Hello?” she said, as she answered it. There
was a moment of dead silence on the other end. Then the sound of
scuffling in the background followed by a short cry before a voice
spoke through on the other end.

“
Clarissa,” said the soft voice. It was Leah.
“Are you there?” Her voice rose high on the last syllable causing a
creeping sensation to steal down Clarissa’s spine, metaphysical
spine that is.

“
Leah, what is the matter? Where is Jackson?”
She was cut off when a new voice spoke through the other
end.

“
I thought I’d call to give you a heads up
this time, death bokor.” His voice sounded ragged like it took a
lot of effort for him to speak. “Wouldn’t you like to watch me take
this witches life? Her life’s essence is so strong.” Then there was
a scraping noise like something metal crawling over a
floor.

Clarissa closed her eyes, trying to pinpoint where
the call was coming from. All the while she was trying to think up
logical reasons why Jackson was doing this. Leah was his friend,
why would he want to harm her and for what purpose?

“
Time is ticking for her.” Jackson made a
maniacal laugh in his throat, one that she had never heard from
him. He wasn’t himself. It was almost like he was possessed of
something evil and it flowed through his voice into the
phone.

A loud high pitched scream cut through and then the
phone went dead.

Clarissa dropped the phone. Actually it fell through
her hand onto the ground, cracking on its way down, breaking into
so many pieces that could they never be put together.

Helen’s head jerked up then, a drop of blood holding
onto dear life on the edge of her lip. “What is the matter?” she
questioned, after swallowing what was in her mouth.

“
That was Jackson, he has Leah,” she paused
reaching out to find them. They were at the Government House,
inside one of the chambers. “He has her and he says he’s pleased by
her strong essence. He intends to kill her for her
essence.”

Maude looked up then. “This girl is a strong psychic
and her life’s essence is stronger because of it. That is what the
boy wants. She is human and he must kill her to get to the essence.
It is found in the blood and tissue of the living, but only we
would have use for it. I don’t know why he would want it.”

Debora discreetly wiped her mouth with a bit of
fabric from the man’s shirt. “If he is possessed then he would have
use of it. It is what allows the creature to walk among the living
for longer periods of time. The demon needs to replenish his host
with the essence of others or he kills his host’s body.”

Jackson must be possessed, Clarissa thought. Then a
most terrible thought occurred to her. Jackson was the one who had
murdered all the S.S. members. Because of their psychic ability
they were prime targets for him and would replenish the demon
parasite inside him.

“
I have to stop him,” Clarissa said in a
frantic tone. “He has to be stopped before he kills anyone
else.”

Clarissa reached down for the remains of her phone,
when her hand was stopped by Maude’s steady warm hand, the blood of
her victim coursing through her. She looked up to see the other
woman holding something in her hand. It was her dagger, the one
that Corrigan had been hurt by. The same dagger that had ended her
life and until seeing Olivier she’d forgotten all about it.

“
Where did you get that from? I thought I hid
it?” She took the dagger, holding it tightly to her
chest.

Maude shook her head, no. “Ambrose had it in his
study. I knew it belonged to you. It practically screamed your name
at me. I'm giving this back to you now and trusting that you use it
wisely. You are our sister now.” She looked to her sisters who
affirmed her statement. “We help a sister, no matter what.”

“
Then help me save them both,” Clarissa
exclaimed, clutching the dagger tightly. She would have wondered
why the dagger hadn’t hurt Maude, but her thoughts were only on
Leah and Jackson.

“
We will if we can,” she answered. Clarissa
rounded them up so that each of them was touching a part of her
body as she imagined them at the Government House. They
disappeared.

Chapter 26-

The Government House stood quiet. On weekends it was
closed to the public, but Clarissa still had access to the locked
doors with the information needed to manifest the appropriate key.
She unlocked the doors, quietly as possible, slipping inside with
her new sisters’ close behind her.

Margaret Ann taped her shoulder, forcing her to look
back at her. She made a motion with her hands that said she and the
others were going to wait inside one of the side rooms, out of the
way but close, in case she needed them. They had agreed that
Clarissa would go in alone so that the possessed Jackson would
think he had the advantage.

Clarissa’s heels echoed on the marble floor as she
walked quickly down the hall toward the farthest chamber where she
knew Jackson had Leah. The younger woman’s frightened thoughts were
like buzzing bees inside Clarissa’s head. And the feel of panic
rose high in her system as did the level of evil malevolence coming
from the closed double doors.

The dagger was concealed inside her skirt, between
the fabric and her skin, the hilt resting against the grinning
skull on her stomach. She mentally held it there, warm against her
cooler flesh, like it was happy to be home, enjoying being close to
her and the kiss it had left on her.

Clarissa opened those double doors to a sight
straight out of some horror novel. As most humans would, she
focused her attention on the center of the scene where Leah sat on
a high chair made of forged steel and metal, ghoulish designs and
symbols etched into the curving layers of the chair along the arms
and legs and the high back. Her legs barely touch the ground and
Clarissa could see by the sudden jerking motion that she was pinned
somehow to the chair by an invisible hand.

Clarissa walked further into the room and the doors
slammed shut behind her, the sound of it echoing in the quiet room.
Then someone stepped out from a small door behind Leah, coming to
stand next to her. The lights were off and only the glow of several
lighted candles illuminated the grim scene.

Leah’s throat struggled to speak, the veins in them
bulging in effort, but nothing emerged from her sealed lips. Her
eyes were on Clarissa beseeching her to do something, a tear
slipping from her lilac colored eyes to fall into the waiting hand
of Jackson.

Jackson brought the warm liquid in his hand to this
mouth where he made a great show of licking the salty moisture.
“Even in her tears you can taste the essence of life,” he said in a
voice not his own.

Clarissa could see his eyes were glazed over like he
was in some kind of drugged stupor. But this was so much more
serious than an intoxication of the senses. She started to draw
closer to them as he stepped back behind the chair.

“
Do not come any closer,” he
barked.

Clarissa stopped mid-stride. She saw him not for the
monster he was now, but the boy she had grown to think of as her
friend. He was not himself. “Jackson, you are possessed by a
demon,” she said.

“
No,” he answered back with an evil grin. “I
am using my abilities just as you told me to do. Leah’s witch
magick will be a perfect addition to my own powers. What do you
think, Clarissa? You and I could be unstoppable.”

It was the kind of talk only lunatics made and she
wasn’t buying into it. “You only think that because the demon is
tricking you. It wants you to take lives so it can use you as his
host. You’re the one who has been committing these terrible
murders, aren’t you?”

That grin remained on his young and still handsome
face. “You’re a clever little ghost aren’t you?” he said in a
patronizing tone. “Yes, and it was so easy, even easier to place
the blame on those flesh-eaters across the bridge.”

“
Why,” was all she could get out her mouth,
watching Leah struggle against her invisible restraints.

“
Why?” he shouted and it reverberated around
the room. “Because those bastards wouldn’t let me join them, they
refused to make me a member, so they had to go. If I couldn’t be an
S.S. then at least I could take everything they held precious. No
one would come to St. Augustine with monsters roaming would they?
Their pretty built up world would crumble then. Wouldn’t
it?”

Clarissa felt the dagger warm even more against her
body. It wanted a life, it wanted Jackson’s. She stepped closer so
that only Leah and the enormous chair were between them. “I can’t
let you harm any more people,” she said sadly. She reached for
Leah, slipping through the restraints and cutting them away with
her gifts.

Leah crumbled into her arms and held on to Clarissa
with every last bit of strength left inside her body. Clarissa held
her, trying to sooth her friend with words of comfort. Then Leah’s
body stiffened just before Jackson made an unholy shriek.

Clarissa was forced to throw Leah away from her
where she slid across the floor with the momentum and another
thought of push from Clarissa. Jackson lunged at Clarissa with a
force that knocked them both onto the ground with Jackson on
top.

She tried to slip out of his grasp, but he held her
pinned with a force she could not shift through. His face loomed
over hers, only inches away. Her chest rose and fell with her
breathing and Jackson was momentarily distracted by the sight of
it. Then his focus shifted back up to her face.

“
I always thought you were rather pretty for a
ghost,” he said, rubbing his cool finger over her bottom lip. “You
and I could have been so good together, but you never noticed me
like that. You’d rather have a soulless beast than me.” He leaned
down and crushed her astonished lips with a kiss meant to
hurt.

Clarissa felt it happen, a pulling motion that
started out on her lips and continued straight to the core of her
soul. Her body stiffened as she realized that Jackson was tugging
on her soul, trying to take it from her like the day she had given
him the lesson. But he meant to take her soul completely from her
body, leaving her nothing but a vapor of energy that would slowly
disperse into the atmosphere.

It was a reaction born of desperation and need to
survive. The dagger at her stomach found its way to her hand as if
it could read her thoughts. Clarissa broke the contact of their
joined lips emitting a scream that echoed not just in the room but
far into the city. Those with a keen ear for the supernatural could
hear its wave of energy for miles.

Jackson pulled back at the noise, his chest hovering
above her and she made her move. The dagger fueled by the momentum
of her arm and the daggers own thirst for death found contact in
Jackson’s chest in a dead center mark over his wildly beating
heart.

They stared into each other’s eyes then down at his
chest where the dagger was logged. He pulled it out, a smile
covering his mouth as his life blood seeped out running over
Clarissa and onto the floor where it pooled and congealed.

Maude and the other sisters stormed into the room,
drawing up short when they saw the scene in front of them. Clarissa
dropped the dagger, taking hold of Jackson’s face as he continued
to smile. Then his expression turned to a look of pure horror as
his eyes cleared from the fog and he looked once more down at his
blood stained chest. He fell away from her to land on his back, his
hand over his heart.

Clarissa moved with him, leaned over his body, the
shinning tears from her eyes streaming down to fall in glowing
puddles across his bloodied chest mingling with the blood in
beautiful macabre swirls. “I don’t want to die, Clarissa,” he
whispered those words before his face went blank and his breath
fell short and stopped.

“
No,” Clarissa whispered angrily.

“
I always said you where a bit of a drama
queen,” Olivier Prince’s smooth voice said from the other side of
the room. He was holding Debora in his arms, looking between her
and Clarissa. “You’ve rounded up the cattle quite nicely I see. I
have to give you credit, Clarissa, you are good at your
craft.”

“
What are you doing here, Olivier?” She turned
to touch Jackson’s lifeless face once more before she stood up to
face her ex-fiancé.

“
What are you doing here,” he mimed back at
her. “I guess that means you haven’t really grasped the full
spectrum of tonight’s events.” He shook his head at her ignorance
as he came closer to her, Debora in his arms. “That poor stupid
boy,” he said as he looked down at Jackson’s still form on the
floor. “I think now would be a good time to make your grand
entrance Francisco.”