Howling Shadows

by C. N. Owens

  “I know,” she purrs, her voice becoming deep and unnaturally powerful as she grows more comfortable. “So, that means you don’t like that I’ve gone back to looking like a woman?”

  “I know what kind of question this is, so my official answer is that you are gorgeous no matter what.”

  “Bravo,” she says. “We had a moment in Denver, didn’t we?”

  “I would say so. You knew why I was there and chose to ignore that and tease me like you always do. You must really hate your kind.”

  “Am I that bad?” she says, pouting.

  “I’m suffering right now. Can’t you tell?”

  “Yeah, and I’m enjoying it.”

  ***

  We talked for the rest of the night. Naturally, Cassie knows the history of this area better than anyone I’ve ever met, even knowing a few of my ancestors from the 1700s. She reminisced about the old days, and all the eleven hundred acres of land she owned that surrounded the house. It was a plantation back then, rotating crops of soybeans, peanuts, and cotton.

  She grows drowsy as the sun filters in through the lacy curtains in the living room. Even so, she seems to want to continue our conversation, cracking dry little jokes and speaking to me in Italian with a harsh, dirty accent that sounds like sex itself. She talks briefly about how she decided to go into hiding, sleeping for a long time—almost a century—in the basement of the house. She wasn’t able to finish the story, growing too tired to maintain a coherent thought.

  “You know, I’m putting a lot of trust in you. Soon, I’ll be defenseless. I’m actually a little afraid you might use that sword on me,” she says.

  “That won’t happen. Thank you for taking me in. I’ve missed you.”

  “Don’t be misled; I’m out of your league.” Her voice weakens to a whisper, her eyes closing until, like a corpse, she lies cold and lifeless, curled up next to me on the couch.

  “Yes, you are indeed out of my league.”

  I pick her up and wake Andrea so she can show me where she sleeps. Surprisingly, they share a king-sized bed, not a coffin. I lay her down on her back with her hands on her stomach, following Andrea’s advice, so she doesn’t bruise too badly while sleeping. Before leaving, I kiss her on the forehead.

  “Get some rest, and be ready to stand guard over Leila,” Cassie mumbles without opening her eyes.

  I push her hair out of her face. “You got it, darling.”

  Andrea drops her blanket in a chair and slides into bed wearing a white tank top and blue boy-cut panties. “You’re welcome to sleep in here with us. She doesn’t cuddle, though. It’s kinda like sleeping with a corpse.” She shrugs.

  “Yeah, I’ve done it before. I think I’ll pass,” I say before walking out, heading for my room.

  Chapter 4

  Trent

  I pull off my shirt and jeans and slide into bed. It is firm and fresh smelling. Probably never been slept in before, I think as my head sinks into a forgiving yet supportive down pillow.

  The sun cuts oblique shapes of light onto the far wall of the room, and just when I start to doze off, the reality sets in that I’m trying to sleep in the house of someone who is supposed to the enemy. I rub my finger across the bite marks that Cassie left. The four pinprick-sized wounds have scabbed over, already beginning to heal. She usually manages to get a feed or two out of me every time we are together, but this is the first time I have asked to keep the evidence.

  My eyes slide closed, and an image flashes. I’m standing outside. I can see Cassie’s old Victorian house out by the Nansemond River, enveloped in golden sunlight, its copper-roofed tower sparkling in the last breaths of the evening sun.

  Several more flashes—this time, bad. A tragic story of torture, rape, and death… just a small glimpse of Cassie’s early life.

  Not much is known about vampires and how they are created, but it is said the bond between a master and their donor spreads like a virus. Even without turning their donor, vampires leave a bit of themselves with their mortal companions, mutating their living cells so that they carry a part of the demon with them, permanently changed. As I recall memories that don’t belong to me, I know this must be part of it.

  I fall into another dream, more like a nightmare. Waking up in another world, I find myself in a room, joining the scene of what looks like a murder. The room is large and rectangular. Off to the left is a massive canopy bed sitting on a floor that looks like a sea of salmon-colored marble.

  On the floor near the bed lies Cassie, probably seventeen years old. Her hair is a mess of wavy brown tendrils, fanned out around her, her gaze is empty. Unlike now, she has a freckled olive-toned complexion, but her emerald-green eyes haven’t changed at all. Her gown is a few shades darker than her flushed skin and surrounds her like a pool of crimson ruffles.

  Her eyes move to a man standing above her, clutching a knife. Blood from the horrific event is spattered up to the middle of his forearm. His cheeks are lined with streamers of tears, reddening as they mingle with the dusting of blood covering his face.

  She coughs gently, and the man’s knife hits the floor with a loud clang. He backs toward the door, vigorously shaking his head no as the girl pushes out a mouthful of blood and mutters the word “Papà,” daddy in Italian.

  Her eyes glance upward when the patio doors swing open, blown by a sudden gust of wind, and the room fills with the foul scent of plague-ridden corpses. A shadowed figure enters the room. He passes like an apparition between the fluttering lace curtains and kneels beside Cassie, studying her with icy-blue eyes. He takes the knife from the floor, smiling, and cuts his finger, then rubs the resulting blood across one of the wounds in her chest. Instantly, it begins to weave back together.

  I jump from a dead sleep, blinking, drenched in sweat. I twist, sitting on the edge of the bed, and notice my phone is flashing. Multiple texts came in from Madison and Nathan.

  From Madison: Teacher’s workday, taking Brit to MacArthur Center for a while. If you are free, let me know.

  Immediately, I respond, never more excited to hear from my ex-wife. I tell her I’m on my way now from Suffolk, only to receive a call moments later.

  “You’re a little late,” Madison says coldly.

  I flip to the message. It came in at ten thirty; it’s now four o’clock. “Shit, I’m sorry. Can we meet up somewhere else?”

  “I don’t think so. We’re already home, and Todd will be getting off work soon.”

  “Maddie, please. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in town.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Sorry. Would you please reconsider?”

  “No. I’m not going to go out of my way because you stayed up all night playing with your girlfriend.”

  She’s not wrong, I think. “So I guess that’s it then.”

  “This is your fault, Trent. You bring all this on yourself.”

  “Okay, hold on. We never agreed on a time. How was I supposed to know you were going out in the morning?”

  “That’s not my problem. Our custody arrangement says that I don’t have to do anything, remember? Are you drunk right now?”

  “I’m not drunk. I stayed up late. Is that a crime?”

  “No, it’s not a crime, but it’s still not my problem.”

  “She needs her father in her life.”

  “She has a father, one who is dedicated to his family.”

  “His family… consisting of whom?”

  “Me and Brit.”

  “Wrong. Brittney will always be my little girl, no matter how badly you want that not to be true.”

  “Oh, you sure are her father. Her father who chooses the company of undead tramps over her.”

  “Wow, you still have a lot of bitterness. Your fiancé must miss his grandma if he’s willing to marry someone so dead and shriveled up inside.”

  “I don’t have to take this,” she says with a barking voice that I remember from years ag
o.

  “Nor do I! You’re a young attorney who handpicked a sympathetic judge to get what you wanted. You took my daughter away. Well, don’t think you can get away with it forever!” I go silent, feeling my blood pressure surging. “Maddie, what happened to you?”

  “I grew up, Trent. Parents have to do that. You can’t even seem to stay sober long enough to function anymore.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I would call all of this off if you would just join the real world again.”

  “And I would give anything to have my daughter in my life. However, if I quit my job, I can’t pay the eight hundred a month that the court demands. What else can I do? Come up here and be homeless?”

  “You could get a regular job.”

  “Sure, I’ll give up everything, move up here, and be a phone jockey. It wasn’t good enough for you; why should it be good enough for me?”

  I hear another long sigh. “This was a mistake. Good luck taking me to court, if you actually plan on doing that.”

  “Yeah, this was a huge mistake. Talk to you later.” My phone beeps as the call ends, and I imagine the gratifying crack it would make if I threw it against the wall. I run my fingers through my hair nervously, trying to calm the headache pounding in my temples.

  ***

  I jump in the shower, which is an antique claw-foot tub with a small circular shower curtain. It was small but I made do, more concerned about missing a chance to see Brittney than having enough space to lather up.

  Madison, or Maddie, as I always called her, was my first and only attempt at living a normal life. She was very young, about to graduate high school, when we met, but I was a soldier in the Army and had my shit together, so her parents liked me, and tolerated our relationship. She was a few months from turning eighteen anyway.

  Always more ambitious than me, she obsessed over photography and art, sometimes finding herself consumed for days working on a single painting. I, on the other hand, joined the Army with more of a desire to blow things up than to serve my country, but I didn’t let her parents know that.

  Maddie found her ambitions thwarted when she got pregnant with Brittney. In a lot of ways, she was devastated, and I felt like shit for it. She had so many plans, college and a career, but couldn’t bear to abort the baby. Despite it all, she still managed to graduate. She gracefully took on the life of an Army wife and mom at eighteen years old, living mostly alone in base housing while I spent months deployed overseas.

  Sweet and loyal, yet disappointed, Maddie made the best of it for a while, working tech-support jobs in call centers. Computers were a hobby that she and I shared. Life seemed sublime for a few years. Because I was infantry, deployment orders kept coming, and each time I would come home to an elated, sex-starved wife and an ecstatic daughter. But like the change in the seasons, people grow apart… others start drinking.

  There are things a soldier sees that can’t be unseen. Nightmares—some that continue to haunt me to this day—tormented me. Butchered children, innocent civilians murdered in the name of a god, others tortured or maimed—all for a radical belief, a promise of eternal salvation.

  As the drinking increased, so did the tension, and each deployment became more painful. Soon Maddie and I were more like roommates than soul mates. Frustrated with the stagnation of menial call-center work, Maddie took classes, working toward a law degree, putting Brit in daycare when I couldn’t watch her in my off-hours. A couple years passed, and a deployment turned fatal. Mistakes were made that led to my discharge. There was always the issue of Cassie… I’ve known her since I was a kid, so I couldn’t very well tell her to piss off, but I guess I could have distanced myself from her a little more, but either way, Cassie wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally, Maddie gave me an ultimatum: it was either Cassie or her.

  ***

  I step out of the shower feeling odd, almost as though I broke up with Maddie all over again, not sure what to do with myself today.

  After a quick shave, I throw on some black trousers and a white button-down shirt before making my way downstairs.

  Andrea is sitting at the table next to the open back door, sipping on a cup of coffee. Braided yellow pigtails hang down almost to her navel, which is exposed beneath the seam of a pink tank top. She motions with her eyes toward the coffeemaker. She has made enough for two.

  “Your sleep schedule must be all kinds of screwed up,” I say as I fill a waiting cup.

  “One of the drawbacks of having a vampire girlfriend,” she says and takes a sip from her blue mug. I walk over to the table and sit, rejecting her offer of cream and sugar without words.

  “A real man, I see, takes his coffee black.” She lifts her cup to her full pink lips with a dimpled smirk, cutting her eyes in a way that I can’t help but find seductive. It could also be that it has been too long since I’ve been with a woman.

  “I like to avoid sugar when I can help it.”

  She flicks her hazel eyes at me again, and I can see what Cassie sees in her. I must enjoy her fiery attitude as much as she does. I wonder what her hair looks like, having never seen it undone, and imagine a thick, wavy mane, the color of wheat, hanging to her waist and dancing off her backside when she walks.

  “Cassie told me you can have your choice of cars to drive, except for her M5.”

  “Damn, and that’s the one I would choose.”

  “You won’t be let down by your other choices. My favorite is the Carrera. The keys are in a little box by the door.”

  I shake my head after a long sip. “How is it that any vampire with a little age on them is stupid rich?”

  “I don’t know. Even though it makes living here more fun, it doesn’t really matter to me how much money she has.”

  “Andrea, how did you meet Cassie?”

  “I ran away when I was fourteen. My parents didn’t approve of my sexual preference.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I wandered, figuring the police or my parents would eventually find me. I went a day and then made it to this house. It was run-down and ready to collapse. When I came in, I woke her up. She had been sleeping for a long time, or so she says. She nearly killed me. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “And you never tried to go back to your parents?”

  “I went back on my eighteenth birthday. They said they looked for me for a while after I left, but they still weren’t interested in their impure daughter.”

  “Damn, how nice of them. We can go burn their house down later if you want.” I smirk at her, sensing that she doesn’t care anymore.

  Andrea lets out a chuckle that reeks of sarcasm. “Cassie always told me you don’t care for rules… I like you.”

  My phone rings, and I realize I never read Nate’s text from earlier. Sure enough, it’s Nate calling.

  “Hey, where are you? Did you get my text?”

  “Yeah. I screwed myself and slept in. You up for a late lunch or something?”

  “I would, but I don’t have much of an appetite anymore. I could use your help, though.”

  “Oh wow, really? This town is going straight to hell.”

  “I’m beginning to agree with you. Hop on 664, heading toward Hampton. You’ll find me.”

  “That’s all the direction I need?”

  “Trust me, yeah.”

  “All right, I’m on my way,” I say before hanging up.

  “Have a good day at work, honey,” Andrea says as she takes my empty mug.

  “Thanks, dear.” I stand, stealing a peck on her cheek before walking out the door.

  ***

  Andrea didn’t lie. Using a remote, she opens the automated barn door for me, and I realize that it’s not a barn at all… not anymore.

  Rows of LED lights flick on, shining pure-white light on a row of five high-end cars. Cassie’s M5 sits in the closest spot, but that’s only a taste of the fine vehicles in her collection. The lineup is impressive: Jaguar, Fer
rari, the black Porsche that Andrea was talking about, and at the end, a GT500 Mustang. I consider my options for a moment and then agree with Andrea. The Porsche is an excellent choice.

  It is a flawless black Carrera GT3. Grabbing the key, I slide into the hand-stitched leather seat, liking that Andrea is almost my height—I didn’t have to adjust it to fit me. I push in the brake and clutch, and with a tap of the start button, the boxer six-cylinder starts with a raspy bark but quickly settles down to a gratifying purr.

  The barn door slides shut as I pull out, headed for Hampton.

  ***

  It doesn’t take long for me to see what Nate was talking about. Merging onto 664 from Suffolk, I encounter a sea of taillights heading for the Monitor–Merrimac Bridge (known as the M&M), stretching back to the ramp I took, almost five miles away.

  Flicking on the hazard lights, I cruise along the highway on the left shoulder, caring more about debris hitting the underside of the car than the people flipping me off on the way past. About a mile before the bridge, cops surround the median. Four news choppers circle in the sky like noisy vultures zeroing in on roadkill.

  An officer who’s controlling traffic stops me, probably assuming I’m a yuppie trying to bypass traffic, until I flash my badge. As the officer scrutinizes it, Nate runs up and says something I can’t hear. Taking the badge, Nate waves for me to get out.

  “Nice ride!” he yells over the racket of the news choppers.

  “Yeah, it’s all right.” I step out of the car, looking up at my nearly seven-foot-tall friend. We stand there for a moment before Nate grabs me in a big bear hug, in Jordan-family fashion.

  “So why did you call me here?”

  “I need an opinion from someone in your line of work—the PAU, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “What does that stand for again?”

  “The Paranormal Anomaly Unit.”

  “Right, right. Well, whatever that means, I think this is right up your alley.”

  “Great,” I respond, not wanting to know what could possibly need my attention. “I’m no expert at anything, though, just a soldier.” My voice fades to a mumble as we look over the crime scene.