by D C Young
Seven people milled around the double burial plot. Some were pulling weeds; others carefully wiped the marble headstones clean from dust and grime. There were five graves in addition to the angel’s. The six who were cleaning up were humans; it was easy to tell. They kept their heads down, fully consumed with their tasks but whenever they did pause to look up at passersby, a tinge of disdain for the picture snapping, chattering tourists was evident.
They were unremarkable but the creature that stood by the angel’s feet, softly stroking the ankles and toes of the statue, was different. He was tall and of slender build. Despite the heat and humidity, he was dressed in full black, trench coat and boots included, of course. What gave him away was his glowing, pale skin slathered in heavy coats of sunscreen… SPF, about a thousand. He looked exactly like my mom used to a couple years back when she would pick us up from school. Also, I had difficulty reading his mind. A dead giveaway! Did you see what I did there? LOL.
Anyway, I was pretty much convinced at that point but to be sure, I put my phone into my back pocket and reached into my bag for the little ULTA compact I always carried. I pulled out a tube of pink lip gloss too, for good measure. Then, I turned my back to him, opened the compact and applied my lip gloss. Bingo! He cast no reflection in my mirror! I probably should have been more scared than I was just then but my mom was a vampire too, a proven badass and she was just a few steps ahead of me admiring a Roman style archway that was dubbed ‘The Gateway to Heaven’ by local visitors.
I took one last look at Mister Vampire, nodded my head in acknowledgment and walked off to rejoin my family. I stood beside my mom and took her hand in mine. Her skin was its usual zero degree temperature but I’d stopped shivering at the touch of her skin a long time ago. She seemed surprised at the spontaneous contact, but I pretended not to notice and kept my eyes on the amazing structure we were admiring.
More often than she knew, I wished that I could talk to my mom about how quickly my psychic abilities were growing. Obviously, she knows I have a gift but I don’t think she realizes how unique each psychic’s abilities can be. Thanks to her friend, Allison Lopez, mom has a better understanding of psychic phenomena, and a lot less fear about my powers than she did at first. But until I find a way to actually talk to her about it, there’s no way she’ll be able to comprehend what I can do and the things I’m going through finding out about my abilities.
That’s one of the main reasons that I write. I know my journal and stories probably aren’t Kindle-worthy but it’s an outlet that helps me a lot. If I don’t figure out how to tell my mom these things, one day I can at least just give her my notebooks to read.
Yeah… my mom thinks her life is weird but here I am, a teenage girl, angst about wanting to talk about stuff with my mom instead of being busy figuring out ways to completely avoid her. Now, that is weird!
Lady TamTam is my hero. She’s a mixture of my psychic self and my vampire mom. Once, when mom read one of the Lady TamTam stories I had lying around, she’d said it reminded her of someone she knew. For some reason, that had scared her just a little bit. I have no clue who she’d been talking about, but after that comment I’d started to wonder if I hadn’t picked some of Lady TamTam’s attributes from my mom’s mind.
Whatever the case might have been, as soon as we got back to the villa, after our walk through the cemetery and lunch at Outback Steakhouse, I found my journal and finished the piece I’d started the day we arrived in Savannah.
When it was finished, I appropriately named it, ‘I see dead people everywhere’.
Chapter Ten
Lady TamTam
Lady TamTam had just reached the top of the hill and paused to pull out her phone. She knew that someone higher up needed to know what was going on.
“It’s TamTam. Just encountered a vampire with human followers. French accent. Called himself the King of the Vampires.”
“You’re the second person to encounter him tonight,” her contact said.
“Right. Now I’m going after him.” She glanced down and the humans were still there as if not sure what to do next. She’d grab one and get some information out of the person.
“Don’t. Just come in. We need to brief you.”
“There is no way that I’m letting that vamp go free with several hours of darkness left.”
She disconnected then turned off her phone so no one could bother her. She whooshed back down to the group, grabbed hold of one of them and put the blade of her sword against his neck. “Tell me who that was?”
He laughed as if she’d told him a joke. At a party. Did he not see the blade against his body? “Tell me.”
“No way.”
It wasn’t as if he was scared of the vampire she’d asked him to betray. He showed no fear. Not of her. Not of the vamp. What was going on? Vampires usually ruled by fear.
Not this one. She grabbed someone else. Same reaction. Had they all been drugged? Did none of them know how much danger they were in? She couldn’t believe that she’d lost her touch like that.
She’d allowed a vamp to escape and these humans were unaffected by her big sword.
What was she up against? Where had he come from?
She left the humans to their gathering then turned her phone back on. She had three messages. All of them told her to come back.
She sighed, dialing her contact. “What’s going on?”
“You need to come back. Emergency meeting.”
She had no idea what was that important other than tracking the vamp. She’d lose him if he didn’t pick up the trail tonight. “I talked to his followers. They all laughed as if I was no threat to them.”
“Come in, Lady TamTam. Right now.”
She debated which the better course of action was; not knowing exactly how long it might take her to track down this new creature. Then again, maybe her group had better intelligence on him than she did.
“I’ll be there right away.”
She disconnected then moved rapidly to the meeting place. She’d just joined this band of vampire hunters and still wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. Still. Here she was, meeting with them at an old mansion.
A former vampire lair. Lights were on in every first floor window. Being a loner, Lady TamTam still chafed at touching base with these people. She frowned as she opened the large front door.
The noise of voices hit her like a wave of the ocean. She stepped back, then adjusted. She’d have to get used to this since in the past she lived alone. Fought alone.
But the vampire hunting business was becoming more dangerous and a free agent was too vulnerable.
“Hey Lady T, wait till you get a load of this!”
She bristled at the nickname that the younger hunter had given her. Everyone seemed to have a nickname. She was Lady TamTam. She never shortened it. Then, she noticed all six of the vampire hunters she had met as part of the group, were standing outside the house’s ballroom door. They were waiting for her like she was the guest of honor at a quinceañera.
“Can you just give me the short version so I can get back out there?”
“Oh, no, Lady T, you need the whole story. You got to see this for yourself. Just wait.”
He sounded almost excited. Hunting vampires was what she was born to do. Some of these younger ones had chosen it. The life had chosen her and she could never understand getting this much joy out of it; unless there was a kill. Then she could party with the best of them.
She followed the man into the living room where it was even noisier. If she could have been anywhere else she would have been. Then Lady TamTam paused and took a good look around her. Everything began to take on a surreal aura. The music was loud… that was real. The room itself was real but every guest there except for herself, and the young vampire who’d shown her in was a ghost. Very real ghosts too.
They all turned around to face her as Lady TamTam entered the room, then as one eerie, ghostly voice, they asked, “Are you here to help us?”
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Chapter Eleven
Rennie Telfair
Welcome to Seagull Point
It was a delight to make the acquaintance of Samantha Moon. I must say that she is very likely to top my list of favorite people… or beings. Even her children, Anthony and Tammy, were a delight to have visiting me at Seagull Point. Samantha’s sister, Mary Lou, her brother-in-law, Rick and their three rapscallions were no exception either.
I don’t think Seagull Point has been this full in ages.
Her daughter Tammy, a budding psychic, was a bit nervous because of the long dead family members that still tootle about the place. I suppose that having dead relatives around the house would be unnerving to most. They even get on my nerves, at times.
I’d considered all of the information that I needed to relay to Miss Moon during the week following our initial meeting and decided that it had been the better part of wisdom to keep her in the dark until things had a chance to develop and I could give her the more critical information about the very powerful spirit of Yemaya and her not so benevolent plans for New Orleans. The two bits of information that I had for her were actually related to one another, so I was, in reality doing her a favor by having withheld the first bit in order to pass along the second.
It was after dinner when Samantha sent the children off to the dock with the other family members, so instead of my tea time beverage of bourbon and Coke, I was ready to enjoy a digestif. I had a Drambuie and poured a glass of Sherry for my guest.
“It will aid digestion…” I began with the same quip that I’d used in California during our first meeting.
“No matter what you’re digesting,” she’d said, completing the sentence.
Finishing off each others sentences is always a good sign that a connection and an understanding has been made. Though I’d had little doubt concerning our future friendship before, at that point even the most minuscule of them had been wiped out completely. We settled into the comfortable chairs in my study and began the inevitable conversation upon the subject that was most pressing to Sam and her work with Mister Fulcrum.
I had witnessed a very small portion of the argument that took place between Mister Ambrose, Kingsley Fulcrum’s client, and the deceased, Mister Collins. Though I had heard what was being said and had witnessed Mister Collins pulling a gun to shoot Mister Ambrose before the latter, pulled his own gun and shot Collins dead. It was clearly a case of self defense. Sam did an excellent job of clarifying my testimony, but she wasn’t quite prepared for the second bit of information that I had for her; the more critical information and the reason that I had held off giving her my testimony in California.
The look on her face was classic when I told her of how the deceased Mister Collins had filled me in on the details of the argument that got him killed, post mortem. In fact, I had to fight to maintain control when she asked her next question, a very befuddled and blunt, “What?”
I explained how Mister Collin’s spirit had refused to cross over into the next dimension until justice for Mister Ambrose was delivered. That had made little sense at first, seeing that Mister Ambrose had acted in self defense but Collins had clarified that he wouldn’t be at peace until Ambrose was free from the charges laid against him. That explanation had not helped to lessen Sam’s confusion, so I had continued with the second bit of information that I had for her; how the two had actually been channeling Yemaya.
Yemaya was a powerful motherly deity of the Orishas. The Orishas were deities who found their way to the Americas, mostly the Caribbean, through the Atlantic slave trade, which brought the beliefs from the Yoruba people of Southwestern Nigeria and Tongo. The Yemaya was specifically linked to the waters, including oceans, lakes and rivers. In addition, she is the amniotic fluid in the pregnant woman’s womb, and also the breasts which nurture. She is highly protective and a powerful feminine energy force. Ambrose and Collins had learned that she was pissed off at New Orleans and their argument had been about whether they should tell anyone or not.
To Sam’s credit, she caught onto the significance of what I told her right away. It did take some convincing, however, to get her to understand that she needed to join the Elder and the Hanged One in New Orleans to confirm what had only been rumors, up to the point that Mister Collins had revealed the facts to me.
The weightiness of the conversation had threatened to put a damper on the rest of our evening together, so it was at that time that I decided to bring up the fact that my granddaddy and great granddaddy were bootleggers of bourbon.
“No wonder you are so fond of the drink,” she laughed. “It’s in your blood.”
“And all the more reason for you not to get any ideas about my usefulness as a vitamin supplement,” I quipped.
“No hardly, Rennie,” she laughed. “I wouldn’t touch the stuff, straight or in a mixed drink.”
“You don’t like Coke either, I take it?” I laughed. “Mama called it Devil in a bottle.”
“The Coke or the bourbon,” she asked.
“The bourbon,” I replied. “To get the same opinion about Coke, you’d have to ask my daddy about it.”
Where I had been certain that our friendship had a bright future, it was in that particular moment that the ice, so to speak, had been broken. We continued to laugh and make jokes about our particular contributions in the paranormal world throughout the evening. The fun that we’d been having and the racket that we’d stirred up, brought out the rest of the family; mine, not Sams.
There is simply no way to explain the difficulty involved in trying to have a decent conversation with a person while everyone around you is putting in their two cents worth about every comment that is made and every statement offered. I told Sam about what was going on in the room while we were speaking and it was then that I learned what her daughter had said about her impressions of the house when she arrived.
“Tammy has nailed it, bless her heart” I responded. I spoke in a different tone than I had been using with Sam. It was a general announcement that I hoped would be heard by all of my kinfolk. “I hope that everyone present will make our guests feel comfortable and at home instead of pulling a lot of nonsense.”
I was sad to see Sam and her family leave. There’s no point in playing down that fact. It had been a very long time since I had been so thoroughly entertained and laughed so hard at Seagull Point. It was a struggle for me not to hug Sam’s neck when I escorted the lot of them out onto the front porch and watched them scurry off back to Tybee.
Chapter Twelve
Sam
Extended vacation.
New Orleans, huh?
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to New Orleans. I love the place, the people, the culture… I mean who doesn’t but dammit, I sure can do without all the damn ghosts. Savannah is a calm spot for paranormal activity compared to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina did not improve things one little bit.
In truth, I still have a problem figuring out why vampires love that city so much. There are thousands of vampires living in and around New Orleans, including a couple dozen famous ones.
I mean New York Best seller list type famous over here. One author had made her fortune re-telling their stories for decades.
There were even whole nests of vampires that sailed up and down the Mississippi River on elaborate steamboats that they called home. Another famous author had blown the lid off that story and made a killing off it too.
Like I said, I love the place, but I was never at ease in New Orleans or the state of Louisiana for that matter.
Ironic… uneasy in the ‘Big Easy’. There was no ‘Laissez les bon temps rouler’ for me… ever.
Louisiana was the home to the most supernatural and paranormal beings per capita in the United States of America… that’s an unofficial, unrecorded fact! Witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts; Louisiana was home to a full roll call of everything that went bump in the night.
Creepy…
Still, my responsibilities outw
eighed my personal discomfort. I’d made promises and I would never break them. I still had to pass the change of plans by Mary Lou and Rick for approval, there was no telling if they could, or even wanted to, change our holiday plans. For all I knew, they didn’t have the time or desire to go to New Orleans with me.
Kingsley had graciously offered to finance the trip for all of us to go, but that was dependent on the others, and he appreciated that. Either way, I would be making the trip though.
The kids were having so much fun on their travels so far; I kind of wanted to keep the experience going for them if I could. Tammy and Anthony had never been to Louisiana and the Benoir sisters had promised we’d get to see much more than just New Orleans if we came. Point Coupee parish, where they had a family estate, promised culture, cuisine and sightseeing only authentic Cajun Louisiana could offer.
I want my kids to have unique experiences like this, especially with their cousins.
When we returned to Tybee Island that Sunday night, the mood was a little sullen among the adults. We were all tired and mosquito-bitten and after all the kids had gone to bed, we lounged outside on the upstairs balcony. I broke the news as gently as I could.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I won’t be headed straight back to Fullerton with you and the kids on Thursday. I hope you guys don’t mind watching Tammy and Anthony for a few days until I get back.”
“Sam, I’m way too tired to even try to figure out what you mean by that so please just start explaining,” Mary Lou said weakly.
“It looks like I’ll be heading to New Orleans for a few days after this.”
“Is it the case you been dabbling in for Kingsley?” Rick asked with more interest than I expected. Usually, it was Mary Lou who wanted to hear every detail about my cases. She was slow in response, but certainly didn’t disappoint and was soon listening as keenly as Rick was.