Vernon wasn’t as sure, he said nothing.
“Terry, you want to get her out of here as quick as you can. She’s fifteen, jailbait. Elizabeth, come on out here!”
The doorknob turned; the bedroom door opened a crack. Terry snagged the doorknob and pulled it closed. “They ain’t nobody here! It’s just me and Vernon!”
I walked over to Terry and kicked him in the nuts. I didn’t break stride, didn’t let on what I intended to do. He grabbed himself and fell balled up on the floor. Vernon moved. I faced him. “If you want some of this you come on. You kidnappin’. I ain’t letting you steal this girl. The best thing you can do is get out of the way.”
Vernon thought, but not long. “I had nothin’ to do with this, I didn’t know what was goin’ on till y’all come over here. If they a girl in there it ain’t none a me.”
The door opened and Elizabeth shyly poked her head out, “Hey Wanda, Rose, Good mornin’.” She smiled, unconcerned.
Wanda grabbed her arm and pulled her out, kicking Terry in the side to move him. Elizabeth was stark naked, Wanda screamed something incoherent. She turned loose of Elizabeth and kicked Terry hard and fast. Vernon held his hands up and backed up. I looked in the bedroom for something to cover her.
The room stank of sex and sweat. Clothing cluttered the floor. I picked up a pair of shorts that looked like something she’d worn, a shirt lay nearby. I pulled a sheet off the bed and took it all out to Wanda.
Elizabeth stood with her back to the wall staring vacantly at the action. Wanda continued to kick Terry, who didn’t really suffer all that much. He rolled forward to get up.
I wrapped Elizabeth in the sheet and pushed her at Wanda. “Here, take her home. I’ll deal with this.”
Wanda caught Elizabeth and dragged her out the door.
“I don’t believe y’all did this. Y’all know what that girl has been through, how can you do something like this? She can’t defend herself, and she’s just a young ‘un.”
Vernon said “Hey, I didn’t know what they was doin’. That girl been going with anybody that want some though, Terry ain’t the first, she just natural easy and puttin’ out.”
“Well Jesus Christ, you want to be damn sure you don’t help, no, you bring in this cradle robbing motha fucka and let him use your place to rape that child!”
“Hey, I didn’t have no idea, I’d have spoke up. Terry, you talk for yourself. This ain’t my shit.”
Terry managed to scoot up against the wall. He worked to be able to talk, seems he didn’t have a lot of air. “She put out, I just told her come on in where we be more comfortable. She ain’t fightin’ at all. I didn’t have no idea how she was; you can’t lay this shit on me. She wanted it.” Terry pushed his chest out and lowered his head, the effect was lightened by the flowery boxers hanging on his skinny ass.
“She ain’t got no idea what she wanted, she been abused and drugged and mind fucked, you just took advantage of somebody like they unconscious. They ain’t nobody home in her most of the time. You knew that. You a worthless piece of shit, you need killin’. I see you again I’m gonna put you down on the spot, if I had my pistol with me I’d shoot your worthless ass where you stand.”
He wanted to bluster; fortunately for him he kept his mouth shut.
Vernon said “Miz Rose, you can’t come in here threatening to shoot somebody in my house.” He wrung his hands and glanced at Terry angrily.
“I just did that very thing. You call the law. Get yo phone. I’d like to see ‘em. I think that’s a good idea. Else you get this lowlife out of my neighborhood today; I don’t give a shit how. He better be gone when the sun goes down.”
I give him a second to do what he wanted. He hung his head and turned away. Terry sat there in the floor with his head hanging.
I headed for the house; the coffee should be ready by now. Wanda brought Elizabeth in. We got cups and sat down.
That nasty bastard should have been laid up when I kicked him. He should have been bleeding. I didn’t have the strength I should. I touched the ground, Dirt responded strong and present, but something was wrong.
A phase of the moon? I didn’t know. If Mags would stay human a few minutes she might be able to help.
Elizabeth didn’t understand what she was doing. She had no idea, getting mad at her didn’t make any sense. Wanda explained that she might get pregnant.
Elizabeth said “What can I do? He wanted me.”
“You’re somebody. You don’t have to do what people want you to. You can say no, walk off, you can ignore them.” Wanda replied.
“But that’s what I supposed to do. I told to do what they want. I got to enjoy what they do. She smiled, but only with her lips. She appeared to be thinking about something else, just sitting and listening to be polite.
“Elizabeth, you want to get married someday? Have kids?”
“If somebody wants me to do that I would.” Not really interested, she absently looked at her fingernails.
Wanda looked at me hopefully. I didn’t have a magic word to catch her interest.
I tried anyway “Girl, if I told you not to do that anymore would you stop?”
“Yes, I’ll do what you say.”
“Would you mind anybody else, though? If they tell you something different tomorrow, you do what I say today or you do what they say?”
Confused, she looked at Wanda beseechingly, “Momma, what y’all want me to say? I try to be good, I don’t want to make anybody mad, I mind and do right.”
Something about the time she’d been under the spell of the fetish had damaged her. Maybe we could train her out of it.
I had a sudden thought; the fetish used drugs and magic. I’d removed the drugs and dependency but what if magic still worked in her? How could I tell?
I felt the necklace with my hand, I’d forgotten it. I hadn’t taken it off last night. It hadn’t crossed my mind when Wanda showed up this morning. It could be the reason I kept losing power from Dirt, but it had saved me last night when I needed it and it didn’t feel hostile; it could be some sort of side effect.
I reached for in where it hung around my neck and as I thought it curled around my wrist and became a bracelet.
I felt strange, dizzy, my vision blurred.
I remembered, in my mind I saw energy from Dirt flow into my feet and up my body. I tried to direct it into Megan but it bypassed my hands and streamed out the top of my head, a cloud of light like a halo sucking down into a bright beam and disappearing into the distance.
At the other end of the beam a figure sat at a table and directed it into a shadowy object on the table, some sort of bowl, maybe a pot.
Somebody was stealing energy when I tried to use it. The scene in my mind changed suddenly. I recognized the creek from the day we fought the magic user; I saw it in slow motion:
I swung the sword overhand at the magician as he readied his invisible ball, the sword’s edge hit the ball at the instant it left the magician’s hands.
The sword contacted the ball of magic. Iron became a cloud of glowing, rapidly expanding vapor. The sword flew away from the expanding mass, bending, drops of molten metal sprayed from the area of contact.
The explosion sucked the fire off the magic user. It coated the sword, delighted with the heat and motion, I was the fire and the sword, I felt it from both sides.
Iron and Fire intermingled, the sword blade passed my face, the expanding ball of fire, metal, and magic hit me in the face and chest, skin bubbled and burst from the heat, my eyes evaporated in a flash of white light.
My hand on the hilt of the sword hit me on the right side of my face. In slow motion the hilt of the sword and my hand scraped across my face and turned my head.
The shoelace holding my necklace on broke or burned in two, I became airborne. The disc of invisible and the rock from Dirt sucked into the sword.
Particles of blood and skin and hair and snot and the fluid from my eyes joined the complex mixture of liquid and plasma and
solid.
My body followed the sword to the creek, floating through the air and smashing down hard into the water.
The sword sank as Water carried me away. I floated weightless, a corpse amongst the other debris floating out to the bay.
I watched and wondered, would fish take bites? Crabs, they’d eat anything organic that didn’t move. There were alligators, how had I passed the alligators?
“Rosalee? Are you there? Rosalee, hey, snap out of it.” Wanda sounded concerned, she’d hit me if I didn’t respond.
“Hey, ok, I’m here, getting revelations.” I opened my eyes. I was sitting in the floor.
Wanda said “Revelations? Oh my god. Oh lord, help us all.” She sank down beside me and leaned on the wall.
“Wanda, what’s wrong?” If something hit her that hard it had to be bad. My stomach sank.
“What part of Revelations did you see? Is they any time left at all?”
Stunned, I said “I ain’t seen no Revelations – oh, shit, I’m sorry, Wanda I meant I was finding stuff out, not Revelations from the bible, I didn’t mean that at all. You scared the hell out of me.”
“You ain’t seen no Revelations, you sure?”
“Yes I’m sure, I’d tell you if I had, that was a slip of my stupid tongue, sorry.”
“Whew, don’t be sorry, that’s a relief, I ain’t at all ready for the end times, I need to get right. What sort of things you finding out, if you don’t mind me asking? Was there anything that might help with Elizabeth?” She leaned back against the wall, her pulse jumping at her neck.
“Nothing about Elizabeth, at least I don’t think so. This was about the stuff that happened with the magic dude down at the creek. I just got a review of it, saw what happened. This was made when I hit the magician’s magic with my sword.” I showed her the necklace.
“That’s probably pretty good, it looks alright I guess, but what we need is a way to fix this girl.”
“Wanda, this thing saved us last night.” She said “Couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead, what you got?”
“Who is Megan? How did you cut a vampire with a necklace? Where is Carl now?” Oh.
“How much weird shit can you deal with?” I guess she didn’t know a lot of what happened with Andy, the new vampire, Megan…she probably didn’t know Mags was a person.
“You dish it out, I’ll deal with it.”
I did. Megan was a Ghoul, married to Armando, and she was pregnant. Megan and Armando lived with Andy, a squeamish vampire. We had something like an alliance. An unknown vampire had stolen Megan and Armando, locked them up and brutalized them. Carl and I had had rescued them.
She looked at me in disbelief “Rosalee, how much of this do you believe? Are you shitting me?”
“They in the cellar, some in my bed, piled all over the place. You want to meet them? All but Andy, he’s pretty much dead for the day I suppose.” I got up and she followed, I turned on the light in the cellar and named them as I pointed them out. Armando raised up and looked at us.
Wanda shoved me behind her getting a wheel running for the stairs.
“Wanda, hold on, nothing wrong, that’s Armando.”
“You didn’t notice the teeth on that mothafucka, ain’t nothin’ good about it, you come on and let’s get behind this shotgun.” She backed out of sight up the stairs.
“Y’all don’t pay us no mind, I needed to prove y’all existed.”
He lay back down and turned his head away from the light.
“Where’s Carl?” Wanda hollered from somewhere upstairs. I turned out the light on my way out and closed the door. It’d be a shame if she shot them after all that work.
I got her calmed down. She didn’t have to see the vampire to believe me and that was ok with me. I took her to my bedroom. Maybe she’d take Carl and I’d go back to bed for a couple hours. Though, come to think about it. I wasn’t tired at all. The necklace felt smug at the thought, it took credit for my feeling better than I should.
“There he is, in my bed. It was late when we got through this morning. Don’t go making somethin’ of it, we just slept.”
Carl stuck his head out from under the covers and said
“Honey, you can tell her, we can’t keep it a secret anymore.” Ok, the fucker wanted to play, I could play.
“Oh baby, I’m so glad you wantin’ to come out with it! Wanda, Carl got in my bed so nobody would know, he likes to bang vampires while they asleep. He said it ain’t really homosexual and all cause they dead, it’s more of a necrophilia thing. You know, with that LGTBQNC, the N is for necrophilia. And big boy is coming out of the coffin!” I tried to keep a straight face but it was hard to do.
He sputtered and bounced out of the bed revealing his clothes. He had on some of Earl’s stuff.
“That’s my momma! You can’t tell her that shit, my god, Rose. Momma, you know that’s a crock.”
Wanda played into it perfectly “Carl, what the hell you doing bangin’ them dead bastards? Don’t you know they got diseases, you dumbass? I raised you better than that, you leave them vampires alone.” She turned away and left muttering “Damn fool boy, can’t just be homosexual, no, he got to go messin’ with a corpse and gettin’ all strange and shit.”
Carl chased her into the kitchen talking with her. I couldn’t follow them. I was rolling on the bed laughing.
Three
W anda, Carl and Elizabeth sat at the table while I put the coffee on. Wanda raved about Terry, working herself up. I agreed that he was scum, but he wasn’t the problem; he was a symptom.
“Wanda, if you kill Terry, she’ll go with somebody else. When I looked I saw her making friends all over the place. Elizabeth, you been with other people, stuff like with Terry?”
“I do what they ask.” She was a little concerned but didn’t see the problem. No embarrassment, no worry.
“I mind, do what they want. I ain’t causing no problems. You know I’m good, you ain’t gotta tell me.” She concentrated, brow wrinkled. “I learned, I’m behavin’ you ain’t got no need to discipline me.”
I had no words. Wanda started to speak and stopped; she shook her head and looked away.
Mags came in and sat down. She knew something was up but had no idea what. She lived her dog to the max, it pissed me off but I couldn’t blame her.
Carl came in and sat down with a cup of coffee, he opened his mouth, looked at Wanda, and closed back up.
“Carl, if you got anything to say, spit it out. We’re out of ideas.” Wanda hung her head.
He said “Elizabeth, I know you remember something about where you from. What part of the country was it?”
She looked aside, her lips pressed together, head bowed. She grunted, her head forced back up, fists trembled with how hard she clenched them, she had no choice. I hadn’t understood the compulsion that drove her until that moment. The question forced the words out of her.
“It was Atlanta. I lived on the south side, Fulton County.” Her eyes darted, looked for escape, but she found nothing.
Wanda said “How long have you been able to remember that? Do you remember an address or a phone number?”
“I didn’t have a phone. I don’t know the address, I never got mail. It was just the place I lived. Please, I don’t want to go back.” She moved her feet as though she would spring up and run.
Her story came out a piece at a time. Her mother was an addict. Elizabeth had knocked around various places, sometimes with her mother, sometimes without. She’d worked wherever she lived, then when she hit puberty she became more popular. Her mother sold her for drugs, a place to stay.
When someone offered her a trip away from there she jumped on it, they fitted her with a fetish and shipped her to Mobile. They put her on the street. She didn’t remember much after that. She had nowhere to go back to.
A pretty light skinned girl, her hair a mass of dark black tight curls falling softly to her shoulders, tears ran down her face. Taller th
an me; she might have been five feet four, around that. Pretty nose, well shaped full lips and beautiful white teeth, she didn’t drink coffee or smoke and she took care of them. Her eyes were a dark, dark green-brown. She was slim with large breasts and wide, generous hips, she was very well shaped.
Worried she’d done something wrong, we’d ship her off or punish her, her voice trembled and broke.
She looked down “I’m sorry. You got to tell me what I did, beat me if you need to; I know I ain’t no good. If you let me stay I’ll change, I’ll be good, I promise.” Her shoulders slumped and it seemed she didn’t have the strength to hold her head up.
“It ain’t that bad, Elizabeth, we care about you. We’re trying to take care of you. Going with men ain’t good for you. You can get hurt, you know that.”
“I’ll be good. If you want to do something to me it’ll be ok, I can do it.” A little hope welled up in her voice. It took a moment for me to understand what she was offering.
I said “No, baby girl, we’re not asking for anything like that. You quit trying to please people and do some growing up, then you decide what you want and that’s what you do.”
Wanda caught on. “Oh my god, no, Elizabeth, nobody that cares about you wants you to do anything like that, you’re too young.” She stood and put her arms around Elizabeth and hugged her.
I said “that’s the whole problem, you ain’t old enough to be doing what you been doin, it’s bad for you.”
Elizabeth said “Y’all ain’t mad at me?”
Wanda’s voice was muffled, “No, baby girl, nobody’s mad at you. We worried about you, we care about you, I love you girl. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“But y’all making me leave.” Elizabeth looked up at Carl woefully.
“No, ain’t nobody makin’ you leave, you being silly. If you had somebody you cared for waiting for you and you wanted, we’d help you get home.” Carl spoke slowly and carefully. He reached over and took her hand, “You stay with us as long as you want, Beth-pest.”
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