Moon River (11 page)

“You should care, dammit.”

And I didn’t just drop him, but threw him as well. He went spinning and stumbling, slamming against my minivan, and ultimately skidding along on his bony ass. He was wearing sleek basketball shorts, and so he went skidding a half dozen feet.

“Why are you doing this, Sam?” he said, as I bore down on him, stalking him, hunting him. I had a sudden image of me pinning Russell down to the dirty concrete floor of my garage, burying my face in his neck, as I had seen Hanner do with the jogger.

I shook my head and fought off the image.

But it came again and again.

It was her, of course.

Tempting me.

She wanted nothing more than for me to pounce upon Russell, to feed from him, perhaps destroy him. She wanted nothing more than my own humanity to be destroyed in the process, to be abolished and removed. My humanity, I knew, was her greatest obstacle to coming forward. As long as I remained who I was, she would stay in the shadows. Must stay in the shadows.

But that didn’t solve my present problem.

Russell, of course, being my present problem. A man who had become bonded with me, so much so that, even as I stalked him, he looked up at me with pure bliss. Pure love.

How did one erase the effects of a potent love spell? Or, perhaps more aptly put, a love curse?

I didn’t know, but whatever I was doing, it wasn’t working. I seemed to only be hurting him more. Confusing him more.

My instinct was to break him. To physically remove the love from him, to beat it out of him. To hurt him so much that he would never love me again. I knew this wasn’t the monster in me. This wasn’t
her
.

This was me.

But it wasn’t right, and so I stopped before him, standing above him, my fists clenched as he looked up at me with hurt and confusion and, yes, more love than ever. Russell was a tough guy. He could withstand an onslaught, even from me. I would possibly permanently hurt him before I saw any change in him. He would take the punishment, and go on loving me afterward.

I stared down at him as he stared up at me. His shirt was torn. His knees were dirty from his tumble over the concrete of my garage. His big, beautiful, brown eyes were full of tears held in a sort of holding pattern. One good blink would send them cascading down his face.

That’s when I felt my own tears running down my face.

All he knew was love, of course. He didn’t understand what was happening. I wasn’t getting through to him. Not on a conscious level. I needed to go deeper.

Whatever that meant, I knew I had to go deeper, break through the spell, to the real Russell beneath.

I dropped to the concrete next to him, sat cross-legged before him, and took both his hands...

Chapter Twenty-one

“I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing hands.

“
It’s okay, baby. We all have our bad nights.”

“
Did I hurt you?”

“
You
hurt
me
?” He laughed.

None of this was right. We shouldn’t be sitting in a filthy garage—which, by the way, I needed to rally the troops and get cleaned this weekend. The troops being, of course, Tammy and Anthony. Anyway, we shouldn’t be sitting here in the garage. We should have been in bed, making love. Holding each other, falling deeper in love. And Russell was so easy to love, too. Russell was easy to be with...but now I know why. Everything was too easy. He was too amenable. There was no fight in him. At least, none left. Our relationship, I realized, wasn’t real. It was built on the supernatural. The unnatural.

“Did you forget the part where I told you that I’m a vampire? That I drink blood? That you should want no part of me?”

He pulled me into him and tried to kiss me. I pulled back. He shrugged and kept on smiling. “Baby, I want every part of you.”

“And don’t you see how cheesy that sounds?”

“
Baby, when it’s love, there is no such thing as cheesy.”

Okay, this had to stop, even if it was just to put a stop to the nauseating sweet nothings. I had to go deeper. I had to reach the real Russell.

“Will you do something for me, Russell?” I asked, still holding his hands.

“
Anything for you, baby. You know that.”

“
I want you to close your eyes.”

He did so instantly, without question, without hesitation. Had I been prone to, I could abuse his devotion to me, his bond to me. I could use him and abuse him and have him do my bidding, and that was exactly what
she
wanted me to do…the using and abusing would steal away more of my humanity, break me down further.

Such a bitch,
I thought, and closed my own eyes.

I expanded my awareness out and around him. I wasn’t going to control Russell’s thoughts, not like I had done with the martial arts trainer last year, or the medical examiner recently. No, I was doing something different with Russell, something I had never done before, something that I wasn’t sure could even be done.

I was looking for the real him.

Hi, Russell,
I thought.

He jerked and opened his eyes. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know this. Our psychic connection was strong, although I kept my own wall up, keeping him out of my own thoughts, as I had always done with him, never wanting to reveal to him my true nature, or just how freaky I really was.

I had wanted to build a real relationship.

Little did I know that I was controlling him more and more. In effect, I was inadvertently doing to him what the bitch wanted to do to me.

I couldn’t do that. Not to Russell, not to anyone.

“
Is that you?” asked Russell. “In my head?”

I nodded and thought:
Yes. Now close your eyes, Russell. And keep them closed and focus on my words.

“
Okay,” he whispered.

His hands, I noted, were shaking. A part of him was scared. That part of him was not allowed to surface, hidden beneath the spell, no doubt frightened and lost and confused as hell.

I literally felt myself slip into the flow of his thoughts. They were not jumbled, as many thoughts were. Indeed, poor Russell’s thoughts were a steady stream of love flowing toward me. I had to admit, that felt nice. What girl wouldn’t want her man to think such thoughts?

But they weren’t natural.

I dipped into these loving thoughts, reveled in them briefly, and pushed forward...and downward.

I’d never slipped this deeply into anyone’s thoughts. Never thought I had to nor would want to. In fact, I had doubted I could. But sex did wonders, connecting two people deeply...perhaps deeper than they realized. Certainly deeper than I had realized.

After my attack, Danny and I had never had sex again. Maybe that had been a good thing. After all, he would have been bound to me like a lovesick puppy. Then again, he probably wouldn’t have cheated on me, either, and my family would have remained intact.

But that would have been controlling, and I wouldn’t have learned his true scumbag nature.

Russell wasn’t a scumbag. At least, I’d never seen evidence to the contrary. Then again, within a few weeks, we had gotten intimate, and, perhaps, the spell had begun then. So, again, I wasn’t seeing the real Russell. Perhaps I never had.

No, I had seen the real Russell in those first few weeks: strong, jovial, confident, driven, and sexy as hell.

Down I went through Russell’s thoughts, deeper and deeper. And the deeper I got, the more chaotic they got, too. Gone was his undying love for me. Here were thoughts about boxing, working out, the death of Caesar Marquez. There were thoughts about me, too— wondering what he felt about me, wondering if we really had something here, wondering why I always felt cold, wondering why I never ate, wondering why I was so pale, wondering why he couldn’t see a section of my face when we had walked past a mirror, wondering why I was so strong, wondering why I only slept during the day. These were his normal thoughts, and they were thoughts from many, many months ago.

Russell was in a sort of holding pattern, I knew. Which made sense. He hadn’t fought for three months now, and he rarely worked out.

He had been, of course, focused on me, while the rest of his life was forgotten.

Yes, I had to stop this. Now. Despite the heaviness in my heart. Then again, perhaps what I felt for him wasn’t real, either. His sweetness, kindness, and attention was all a sham. It was all spurred on by a spell.

No, he
was
sweet. I’d always remember the quiet, confident boxer who first came into my office and hired me last year.

I went deeper still, slipping beyond phobias and fears and secret sexual desires. I paused briefly at one, raised my eyebrows, and then continued down deeper into his subconscious.

How, exactly, I did this, I didn’t know.

But I saw it almost as a physical journey, flying down through the various layers of his consciousness. I knew I was sitting in the garage, in dirt and oil and filth, holding his hands, eyes closed, but I was on a surprising journey through another person’s consciousness.

But I still hadn’t reached the
real
Russell Baker.

I passed through some of his oldest memories, and down into his early childhood. I watched him both picking fights and being picked on. Those who picked on him soon found themselves in a lot trouble. I almost laughed as I watched him single-handedly beat up two bullies.

Down I went. Deeper and deeper.

Early childhood memories. A loving mother. An asshole father. The father beat him, but Russell always fought back.

Deeper and earlier, and soon I saw something rather amazing. Burning brightly in his deepest memories was a furious ball of white light. Hovering there in his thoughts.

Waiting for me.

Two words appeared in my mind:
Hi, Sam.

Russell?
I thought.

But, of course.

Chapter Twenty-two

I smiled, although I kept my physical eyes closed.

Yes, this sounded like the real Russell. Confident, humorous, carefree. Not obedient, agreeable and, well, love-struck.

I did fall in love with you, Sam, but something funny happened on the way to the Forum...

You fell under my spell.

I sensed him chuckling.
Something like that.

So, who am I speaking to, exactly?

It’s me, Sam. The Russell you met and remember, I’m just sort of...buried down here. Watching myself from a distance, watching myself act like a love-starved schoolboy. That’s some spell.

The ultimate pussy-whipped spell,
I thought, and blushed, although I didn’t think Russell could see me blush. I was still talking to his ego. The part of him that was him. Not his higher self or spirit.

He laughed lightly in my head. I was still looking at a very bright spot...what this was, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps his focused energy. Or perhaps this is what the mind looked like at its deepest, most unreachable spot.

Unreachable by most, Sam. Not you, apparently.

So, you believe me now?
I asked.
That I am, you know...

A vampire?

Yes,
I thought.

You have a hard time saying it, don’t you, Sam?

Yes,
I thought.
I do.

Why is that?

Because it’s crazy. I can only handle so much crazy.

You’re in denial, Sam.

Oh, yeah? And what do you know of vampires?

Not much, but it’s pretty obvious you are one.

That obvious, huh?

I knew something was up by our third or fourth date.

What gave me away?

Your skin, mostly. You were always so cold.

But I used hand warmers!

Russell laughed, the sound reaching me distantly.
True, but the rest of you was always so cold. Your cheeks, your lips, your shoulders. And I mean cold. Ice cold. Dead cold.

Ouch,
I thought.

There are no secrets here, Sam. We’re both an open book. At least, I am. I can see that your mind is still closed.

You know more than I give you credit,
I thought.

We all know more than we give ourselves credit for. The problem is, there’s too much surface shit that gets in the way, too many clouds obscuring our thoughts, filling us with worry and doubt and fear. It stops us from tapping deeper within ourselves.

Good to know,
I thought.
But I have a hard time believing you could ever be afraid.

You would be surprised, Sam. For instance, I’m afraid now.

I caught his meaning.
You are afraid that you might never come back.

Yes, Sam.

How do I release you?
I asked.

You’re doing it now.

And how, exactly, am I doing that?

By reaching out to me, connecting to me, bringing me out of the funk I was in.

You call this a funk?

It’s the funkiest of funk, Sam. Limbo, actually. A dull state where days and weeks and months slip past, and I can only watch from a distance, watching as I act like a love-struck fool.

But you love me, too.

I do, Sam.

I’m sorry I did this to you,
I thought.

It wasn’t your fault, Sam. I believe you didn’t know what would happen.

I wanted to bury my face in my hands, to hide the tears that had started to come, but I needed to hold tightly to Russell, to keep the connection.

Had I known,
I thought,
I never would have let things get as far
as they had.

I know, Sam. I also know that you have total control over me. I am, quite literally, at your mercy. You could do with me as you wish. I would do anything for you. Or, rather, the cursed part of me would do anything for you.

The love-struck schoolboy?

Yeah, him.

I don’t want to control you, Russell.

I know you don’t, Sam.

But you need to know that there’s a part of me that I struggle with, a part of me that does want to control you. To use you, to make you do...

Your bidding?
he asked lightly, laughing.

Yeah, that.

We all have our inner monsters, Sam. Yours is just a little more obvious.

I had given Russell a glimpse inside of me, of what I dealt with, and he had obviously sensed the demon within, the demon waiting to come out.

I’m sorry you have to deal with this, Sam.

Thank you.

But there’s one thing I do know above all else.

The tears were really flowing now. I felt them running unhindered down my face, into my sweatshirt.

I know that you will beat her, Sam. You will beat the shit out of her, too.

That’s just the boxer in you,
I thought, and nearly laughed.

Maybe,
he thought.
But I also know this. There comes a time when we all have to stand up for what we believe. There’s a time for love, and a time for war. And your time for love is not now, Sam. Your time for war is now. Get her, Sam. Remove her and beat her back to wherever she came from.

And what of love?
I thought, weeping silently.

Not now,
he thought.
And not with me, Sam. Not ever.

I buried my face in my hands, letting go of his own.

Release me, Sam,
I heard him say from somewhere deep in my thoughts, his voice fading, now barely discernible.
Release me...release me...

Chapter Twenty-three

Russell was gone.

I felt empty and alone and unlovable, almost suicidal. Almost. I would never leave my kids or my sister or Allison or any of my friends. No, not over lost love. But as I sat there at my kitchen table, my head in my hands and a cup of lukewarm tap water in front of me, I felt as if something very precious had been stolen from me.

Stolen by
her
.

The ability to love and be loved romantically.

I fought more tears, then decided not to fight them and let them flow and shook my head and cursed her and God and the Librarian and myself. I cursed the vampire who had first attacked me. I cursed Fang because I was pissed off that he left me. I cursed Kingsley for cheating on me, and cursed my ex-husband for abandoning me when I needed him the most. I cursed the stupid glass of water in front of me and the filthy blood in my freezer in the garage. I cursed my unattached garage because who buys a house with an unattached garage? My cheap ex-husband, that was who. So, I cursed him some more. And cursing him felt the best of all, and so I did that for a few more minutes until I couldn’t curse anymore and couldn’t see through the tears. I picked up the glass of water and threw it across the kitchen, so hard that it shattered into a million pieces and put a hole in a cupboard. I cursed the million pieces.

And then I was done cursing. I just sat there and wept, my mind empty. And later, when I was done weeping, I thought of one person. The person I missed most of all. Not Kingsley or Russell and certainly not Danny.

I thought of Fang.

I missed him so much that I thought I would scream.

And then I did scream.

Loudly.

So loudly that a dog down the street started yowling along with me.

Chapter Twenty-four

After I had cleaned up the glass, I made a mental note to call a handyman. I might have been able to fly to the moon and back, but I sure as hell couldn’t fix something like this.

As I sat back at the kitchen table, I got a text from Anthony. It was a close-up picture of his nose. Actually, it was a picture of the
inside
of his nostrils. It was kind of blurry. Under the picture were the words:
Miss you, mama!

I wrote:
Miss you, too, now go to bed.

Boo,
he wrote. Then added:
“ger”

Yes, booger. Go to bed. Tell your sister I love her.

Better yet, I would. I texted her cell phone directly, telling her I loved her and missed them. Her response was immediate:
Anthony’s annoying me.

That’s all you have to say?
I wrote back.

Well you know I love you, mom! Do I always have to tell you????

Yes.

Fine!! I love you! Better?!!?

Yes, so much better.

Gawd!!

I told her to go to bed, too, to which I didn’t receive a reply back. I sighed and turned my ringer off for a few minutes and got up from the table, found a pad of paper and a pen in my messy utility drawer, and sat back down.

I took in a lot of air, held it for a few minutes then expelled it slowly. I did this again and again, clearing my thoughts, ignoring my troubled heart. I continued doing this until I felt my hand jerk slightly. Followed by my whole arm, the pen began to move across the blank page as if on its own.

Three words appeared on the page before me:
Good evening, Samantha.

“
Is this Sephora?” I asked aloud.

My hand jerked some more.
Yes, Samantha.

“
It’s been a while since we last spoke.”

Yes.

“Does that bother you?”

I am here for you, Samantha, as I will be until time immemorial.

“You have nothing better to do?” I asked. It was meant as a flippant joke, but it came across as sort of rude to my own ears. “Sorry,” I added. “Didn’t mean that it way.”

My hand jerked, coming alive with small impulses of electricity. I watched in mild amazement all over again as my hand wrote seemingly independent of me.

You are the better thing for me to do, Samantha.

“
Now, that was a sweet thing to say,” I said. In fact, those words were exactly what I wanted to hear. I nearly broke down at their kindness, even though I wasn’t sure who or what Sephora was. But I powered through, fighting back the tears...after all, I had cried enough for the night.

A kind word goes further than you think,
my hand wrote on its own volition.

“
I’ve heard that,” I said. “The Ripple Effect.”

Kindness is kindness, Samantha. It’s not a theory or an effect or a movement. It just is.

I thought about that, and I thought about the bitch living inside of me, the demoness, as I thought of her.

“
And what of her?” I said, knowing that Sephora knew my innermost thoughts, suspecting she was as close as I got to a guardian angel these days, since my own guardian angel abandoned his post nearly two years ago. “Do I show her kindness, too?” I added. “Perhaps let her take me over for all eternity, while I watch from the shadows, a prisoner in my own body?”

It is a grim picture you paint, Samantha.

“It’s a grim reality,” I said. “And, for the love of God, please don’t tell me to choose a new reality.”

I won’t, Sam, especially since you summoned in the love of God.

“Is that a joke?”

An observation. Love is a powerful tool. In fact, it’s your only tool.

“To beat her?” I asked.

To help her, Sam.

I blinked in the darkness, which wasn’t really darkness. All around me, like sunlight sparkling on ocean waves, glittered flashes of radiance. As always, within the radiance, I could see anything and everything.

I blinked again, and said, “Help her how?”

To move on, Sam.

“
Move on to where?”

There was a long pause and my hand remained motionless, finally I felt the tiny electrical impulses and watched as my hand spelled out a single word:
Home.

And just as the word appeared, I heard a small shriek in the back of my mind, deep beneath my many layers of consciousness. It was
her
. And following that faint shriek, I saw an image of a bright soul being absorbed by a much brighter light.

“
She’s showing me an image,” I said, not liking this at all, not liking that she could leak images to me now. Yes, she was growing bolder and more powerful. I swallowed and said, “At least, I think it’s her. She’s showing me a soul—hers perhaps—being absorbed by a much bigger soul...or by something eternally big. God, perhaps.”

Yes, Sam,
my hand wrote,
she will be returned to the Creator.

“
I don’t understand what that means.”

This question was followed by silence. In particular, my hand remained motionless.

I added, “You don’t know what that means, either.”

No one does, Sam. Not exactly.

“Is it a bad thing?”

Never. It’s a loving thing. A loving process.

“At least, you think it is.”

She will be returned to the Creator...who created you and me out of love.

“I see lots of people around me who are not very loving.”

You see lots of people who are growing, Sam. Evolving.

“Meanwhile, they hurt others, terrify others, and wreak havoc upon the world.”

These lost souls are not as abundant as you are led to believe, Sam. Remember this: there is more good than bad.

“But there is bad.”

There is also confusion, anger, hate and misery, all of which can drive good people to do bad things, temporarily.

“So they are not really bad. They are bad in the moment.”

Bad is relative, Sam.

My head was hurting, which was saying something since my head almost never hurt. And, like the true freak I was, the pain in my head went away almost instantly. I said, “What’s bad to one person...”

Is justice to another, or fair to another, or right to another.

“But there is evil in the world?”

There is only light and dark, Samantha.

“Then who or what is in me?”

There was a long pause before my hand twitched and twitched, and the words it spelled out left me sick for the rest of the night...and it wasn’t the kind of sickness that my immortality could heal.

Perhaps the darkest of them all.

Chapter Twenty-five

I was alone in bed.

Dawn was coming. I knew this because I could feel it coming in every fiber of my being. It wasn’t a good feeling. In fact, it made me nervous, agitated. Now I knew the reality behind the feeling. Sunlight made
her
nervous and agitated. The demoness within.

And Fang wanted this?
I thought.
Fang sought this?

I shook my head and clawed at my covers, restless as hell, agitated as hell. My kids were still with my sister, as they often were during the summer. She took them willingly enough, knowing my penchant for working the late shift. I think she also wanted to give them a normal home, even if for a few hours a night. She hadn’t said so in so many words, and, truthfully, I didn’t blame her. In fact, I was okay with it. A few times a week with her was okay by me, especially during the summer.