Netherworld II: Blood Potion No. 9

Netherworld II:

Blood Potion No. 9

By

Tracy St. John

(C) Copyright by Tracy St. John, June
2012

(C) Cover Art by Eliza Black, June
2012

ISBN 978-1-60394-701-5

Published by New Concepts
Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.store.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All
characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and
not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.

Chapter 1

The creaking of the old wooden stairs
and the thumping of many feet warned me I was about to have
company. I tucked my book under my arm and went to the mirror on
the wall. Its luster had long faded with age but it still reflected
well enough to make sure my upswept red hair maintained its
pristine style. Yep. I looked pretty swell for a dead
gal.

I made my way across Rebecca
Sanderson’s sitting room past the ornate armchairs. The skirts of
my Victorian-era dress whispered across the Oriental rug lying upon
the wide planks of the hardwood floor. Rebecca herself was long
gone, not having become a ghost upon her demise as a tottering old
lady. I often wondered what happened to the others not locked into
Earth-bound existences. I wondered why I hadn’t gone where they
had, why I was still stuck here.

My name is Brandilynn Payson. I was
murdered earlier this year by a vampire serial killer who had
issues with women of questionable morals. But that’s another
story.

I sat down on the tufted sofa with
carved wood trim and arranged myself just so. Fresh flowers graced
the table in front of me, right next to the silver tea service.
Their lovely fragrance still couldn’t mask the mustiness of age
that comes with old houses and their furniture. It doesn’t matter
how much you clean and air out an older place; it still somehow
carries that scent of years past.

I could hear my visitors near the first
room down the hall of the second floor of the historic Sanderson
Cottage, located on Goose Creek Island, Georgia. The whole island
was once a summer retreat for the ridiculously wealthy, but now
it’s a state park. All the cottages are still here, though the
millionaires are long gone from this beautiful spot: the
Vanderbilts, the Pulitzers, the Rockefellers, and the Sandersons
themselves. Their winter homes remain, lovingly maintained and
receiving their due appreciation from tourists.

I looked over my dress with a critical
eye. I’d changed its color and trim no less than a dozen times
tonight, and I thought it looked pretty good. Ruffles at my neck,
wrists and the hem. Emerald green to match my eyes and flatter my
porcelain skin. Darker forest green details. Even the lace-up boots
matched, though I kept them hidden under the sweeping skirt. I hate
my size 9 ½ feet.

No corset, of course. I’d died a size
4, working out and counting every calorie to maintain my figure,
which my income hinged upon. Appearances were everything in the
world I’d lived in. One of the nice things about being dead is
never having to climb on an elliptical machine again.

I closed my eyes and felt for the
earth’s natural magnetic pulse. Sanderson Cottage sits a few yards
from Goose Creek itself, a little stretch of water coming from the
intracoastal waterway. Water is also a marvelous energy conductor,
and I drew on the

power it created. It fed my
non-existent body, making me tingle at my fingertips and toes. I
was almost ready.

Steps approached from down the hall. A
velvet cord in the open doorway kept the tourists out of the late
Rebecca’s sitting room, allowing them to admire from afar the fine
antique furnishings the Sandersons had used when they were new. As
the small group of no more than ten persons at a time drew near, I
opened the book I held as if reading it while I continued to draw
energy. My prop was the latest collection of sonnets by the Bard
himself, who still creates beautiful tapestries of words after all
this time.

One more gulp of energy, and I was
ready. I opened my eyes and pretended to read my book as the tour
guide and her entourage reached the doorway.

The tour guide, a self-assured woman of
about forty and still tan despite our being only two weeks from
Halloween, had a clear voice with enough Southern twang to charm,
but not enough of one for Yankees to make fun of. She sounded
genteel, not redneck-y.

“This next room was Rebecca Sanderson’s
sitting room. The silver tea service was a gift to the family from
President Cleveland.”

A woman interrupted the guide’s spiel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that her blond hair was going
frizzy from our notorious southeast Georgia humidity. We were
currently having a hot spell, a last visit from the past summer as
so often happens in October.

“Did the re-enactor’s dress come from
Mrs. Sanderson or is it just a costume? It’s beautiful.”

The tour guide, Bethany was her name,
looked at the woman with well-played confusion. “We don’t use
re-enactors.”

I chose that moment to stand and leave
the room via a connecting door to the small lavatory that no
tourist saw. The extra power I’d drawn bled away a little at a
time, and I knew I faded from sight a few steps from the washroom.
I was rewarded by the gasps of the onlookers. I couldn’t help but
grin as I listened to the excited chatter. Another stellar
performance.

They’d seen a real ghost all right, but
not Rebecca Sanderson’s. I wondered if they’d be as excited to know
they’d actually sighted a murdered escort. I’d been one of over two
dozen victims of the Fulton Falls Ripper, now dead himself and
unlamented.

Another aged mirror greeted me in the
not-so-well conserved bathroom (after all, who wants to look at the
toilet Rebecca Sanderson once squatted on?). I played with my hair,
smoothing my palm over the smooth parts, curling my finger around
the curly parts. Bethany finished her spiel about Rebecca’s sitting
room to the now breathless tourists, and they moved on, no doubt
hoping to spot another spirit roaming around. Sorry folks, I was
the only one, and I’d been hired to do it. Sightseers love a
haunted house, and they paid good money to catch a glimpse of a
ghost. We’re hard to see.

A familiar voice spoke cautiously from
the sitting room entrance, one that was thick with a down-home
accent. “Brandilynn?”

I tripped out of the bathroom, happy to
see Lana Minchew. She was a round apple of a woman, heavy handed
with her makeup, a terrible dresser, but an absolute sweetheart of
a gal. She was also psychic, and one of the few living persons who
could sense my presence and hear me.

She wasn’t alone. Taylor Allen, a
clairvoyant, and Taylor’s girlfriend Patricia Keith were also on
the other side of the velvet rope. The trio of women made a very
unlikely looking group. In contrast to cuddly, lumpy Lana,
resplendent this evening in a ruffled orange polyester blouse and
black leggings – no doubt in honor of quickly approaching Halloween
– Taylor was no-nonsense casual with her short brown hair and
slender body clad in a polo shirt and khaki slacks.

Then there was Patricia. Imagine a
young Katherine Hepburn, circa 1930, with sleek shoulder-length
black hair, cool and elegant in a silk button-down blouse and
pleated slacks, the creases precisely where they should be. That’s
Patricia.

Oh yeah, add her lily-white skin and
almost black eyes which went red-rimmed when she removed her
glamour. Along with the fangs that appeared when she wanted you to
be afraid. She’s a vampire.

I was delighted to see them. “Hey,
girls. I didn’t know y’all were coming on the tour.”

Only Lana could hear me, of course.
“Brandilynn says hi,” she told the other two. She turned back to
me, looking slightly to the right of where I stood. “Actually, we
just tagged along with the group because we needed to speak to you.
Very nice job, by the way.”

Patricia nodded, her smile doing little
to soften the predatory cast of her expression. Vampires always
look like they’re on the hunt for something to suck the blood out
of. If you can look at one without a shiver going down your spine,
you’re a better woman than me.

Her voice was as chilling as a February
midnight. “The dress is wonderful. Becky didn’t have anything with
that many ruffles, but she would have loved it if she
had.”

Back when Patricia had been alive-alive
and not undead-alive, she’d worked for the Sandersons as Rebecca’s
secretary. She’d spent many winters in this cottage and loved it as
one might a childhood home. Until this past spring, she’d used the
grounds as her body’s daytime resting place. A skirmish with other
paranormals had necessitated her to hide her coffin
elsewhere.

I like Patricia a lot during the
daytime when she’s a ghost like me. She’s loyal to a fault and a
great friend to have. As a vampire … well, I’m not a huge fan of
vampires. Even now that I’m dead and don’t have to worry about them
sucking me dry, they still give me the willies. I have to give
Taylor all the credit in the world for her courage in having
Patricia as a significant other.

Getting a compliment from
Patricia-as-a-vampire was a gold star day. I burbled happily from
the unexpected praise. “I probably should have stuck with
historically accurate, but I can never leave well enough
alone.”

Lana smiled, her hot-pink lipstick
clashing horribly with her orange blouse. One of these days I’m
going to make her go shopping with me after I wrest full veto power
over her wardrobe and makeup choices. “You looked stunning,
sweetie. We’re sorry to interrupt your fun, but Tristan would like
you to go to the King George immediately.”

My heart jumped with equal parts
delight and nervousness. Tristan is Patricia’s older brother, my
sweetie, and the head honcho of Fulton Falls’ vampire clutch. To
say my feelings for him are complicated would be putting it
lightly.

That he wanted my presence at night
when he can’t see me told me something was not going well. “What’s
up?” Then I had a bad thought. “Is Dan okay?”

Lana’s jolly expression never faltered,
always a good sign. “Everything is fine. Tristan just needs you to
run an important errand for him.”

Taylor frowned slightly. She always
seemed so serious. “I’d hardly call it an errand.”

Patricia touched her shoulder gently.
Her fangs glimmered into view against her lower lip for an instant,
a sure sign she was either thinking blood or sex. Probably both.
Yikes. Her tone held a warning. “We’ll let him bring Brandilynn up
to speed. It will save time. Will you join him right away,
Brandilynn?”

“Sure. I showed up as Rebecca three
times here this evening already. That should boost the haunted
tour’s value.”

Lana nodded to the other two women.
“She said she would. Brandilynn, Isabella is waiting for you with
Tristan.”

I sighed. I really hated being
channeled by the living, but it was the only way to communicate
with them without having Lana around to interpret for me. “Okay.
I’ll see you all later.”

Time to materialize at Para Central,
where Tristan conducted business when he wasn’t downtown at the
county commission offices. The refined surroundings of Rebecca
Sanderson’s sitting room smeared into a haze of lantern-lit colors
for an instant before a paintbucket wash of gold and burgundy
replaced it.

I appeared on the raised bandstand of
the old King George Hotel’s ballroom. Well, I would have appeared
if there’d been any other ghosts to see me. But no, it was all the
living and the undead here in Para Central.

In its heyday, the King George Hotel
had been the crown jewel of Fulton Falls, Georgia, which lies
opposite the intracoastal from Goose Creek Island. The Big Fire of
’36 had destroyed the hotel, along with most of downtown. The
current Fulton Falls was built on top of the old, leaving ruined
structures crumbling in decay beneath the world of the
living.

Some of the more well-loved structures
have their own afterlife, showing up to the dead in all their
pre-fire glory. The old First Baptist Church, the original Fulton
Falls Library, and the King George Hotel are such
buildings.