by Greg Herren
The buzzing, the numbness in my side was spreading and now it was burning.
Margery rushed to my side, pressed her scarf against my side.
There was another shot as I felt myself sliding, slipping, losing control of my balance and then my head hit the floor with a thud and it hurt and…
I was staring at the ceiling and I remember crazily wondering why Margery put up with such lazy maids. There were cobwebs in the ceiling corners.
Couldn’t anyone else see them?
Someone was whimpering.
There was another shot and I heard Frank shout and everything on the edges of my vision was going gray and getting darker, and then I saw Frank’s face, deadly, ghastly white, his eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them before and he was opening my coat and someone was shouting CALL 9-1-1 and I was looking up into the deep gray pools of Frank’s eyes.
I wanted to tell him I loved him, but nothing would come out of my mouth.
The numbness kept spreading, and my legs and arms felt cold, but my side still felt like it was on fire.
I was so cold.
Frank was tearing open my coat and I saw the tears on his cheeks and I wanted to tell him not to worry but nothing would come out, my mouth wasn’t obeying the commands I sent it, and I sank down into a sea of gray darkness, shadows swimming around me and the last thing I remember thinking was, is this what death feels like…
Chapter Twenty-four
Knight of Cups
A young man of rare intelligence
I wasn’t cold anymore.
I was floating, adrift, light as a cloud moving in a warm gentle comforting breeze across the sky, but at the same time I was drifting downward. I could sense the ground somewhere below me, but I wasn’t afraid of falling.
I was always safe whenever I was here—wherever here was.
I was drifting down through the air. My side didn’t hurt anymore; the burning and the tingling and the numbness had magically disappeared, gone, like I hadn’t been shot. I was wrapped in a cloud, it seemed like, drifting aimlessly ever downward through air that caressed my body like a blanket made of warm wool. I felt at peace, relaxed—all the stresses and worries were lifted from me and no longer weighed me down. I could feel knots in the muscles in my back, shoulders, and neck releasing as through pressed and massaged away by strong, firm fingers.
Everything was peace.
I sensed Her the way I always did; it was like She was suddenly there when She wasn’t just a moment before. But over the years when I’ve gone to this place, summoned by the Goddess, I’ve learned that time has no meaning here, nor does space or weather or anything we measure reality by. The Goddess and her spiritual plane are different, a dimension that most people never have the chance to see or experience, and I am always grateful for the grace she has shown me over the years.
My body began to turn in the air as I continued my slow, soft descent, my feet reaching for the ground as the mists began to dissipate, and then my bare feet were on round pebbles, hard yet yielding to my weight, and in the distance as the mist cleared I could see the sea, green and sparkling and foaming as the gentle waves broke on their approach to the soft white sand of the beach, the sea farther beyond the dark blue of grapes, glittering in the soft light of a sun that was neither too bright nor too hot, but was just right, just perfect, the way things should be.
I’ve sometimes thought that where I go when the Goddess summons me might be what those who wrote the Bible might have called Eden, and maybe it was, maybe Eden was in another dimension and maybe Heaven was, too, which was why so many religions across the continents and history have so many legends and myths that are similar, because there was a commonality of experience, the tales changing slightly over the millennia as they were repeated, copied from copies, changing here and there as the words moved from one language to another.
I was standing on a cliff, I realized, and the woman who was standing there with me, the Goddess, was in Her guise of Aphrodite, I believed; I couldn’t really get a glimpse of Her face or see it, but I could sense how beautiful She was in this incarnation of the Divine Feminine, the waves of love and peace and beauty radiating from her. She was wearing a flowing Grecian tunic of lavender, and there were flowers woven into the braids of Her glowing blond hair.
“You will not die,” She said, without turning Her head to look at me. “It is not your time.”
Which was, of course, good to know.
“They won’t even keep you at the healing center,” She went on. “They will simply treat your wound and send you home with medicines to dull the pain. But you must not allow your wits to be too dulled by these medicines. You have to remain aware; you and all you care about are still in grave danger.”
“Is Colin safe?”
“His path is not clear.” She waved one of Her hands, and I could see ripples in the air before Her, colors and lights swirling as they slowly began to take form, and I could see Colin. He was sleeping in a small room, his big chest rising and falling with every breath. I couldn’t tell where he was, if he was safe, if he was free or if he had been captured. “But the danger to your world doesn’t come from his. The man he killed was a monster, a demon, who often tortured women and children because he enjoyed it. No, Colin is not yet safe, but there will be no further danger to your world from his. He has made sure of it.”
That was a relief. “And Taylor?”
“Taylor is a being of love and light,” She replied, waving Her hand again to make the image of Colin swirl into color and light again before fading away to nothing. “He will survive and continue to show everyone who comes into contact with him a better way.”
I felt myself starting to drift away from Her again, Her form dissolving into the rising mist, and I called out, “But why are we still in danger?”
“If you think, you will know the answer.”
I began to surface from the gray darkness and the swirling fog. Color swirled, and sounds, all running together so I couldn’t separate them in my head. The wailing of a siren. Electronic beeping. Tires on pavement. Voices talking, but the words were just sound. Someone was holding my hand in theirs, gripping mine strongly.
I willed my eyes open and was staring at a roof.
“He’s awake!” a voice I didn’t recognize said, and I turned my head slowly to my left. I saw a handsome scarred face and beautiful loving gray eyes.
Peace and love.
Frank.
I opened my mouth to say his name but couldn’t say anything. There was something in my mouth.
“Shh,” Frank whispered. “Don’t try to talk. We’re on our way to the emergency room. You’ve been shot, do you remember? How do you feel?”
I rolled my eyes. My body felt numb.
Memories came rushing back, images flashing through my head in slow motion. The foyer of the Schwartzberg Castle, Amanda with the gun, Frank trying to flank her, the gun going off.
And the pain, the shock, looking down at my hand and seeing it covered in blood.
My blood.
I opened my mouth again and made a frustrated noise.
“They gave you a painkiller,” he went on, ignoring my attempt to speak. “You were very lucky, Scotty. The bullet went through you without hitting anything, but you still need to get checked out and stitched up and…all that stuff, but you’re going to be okay.” He gave me a big smile, dimples sinking deep into his cheeks. “You’re not going to be going to the gym any time soon, and you’re going to have to take it easy for a while, think you can do that?”
“Mmmm glurg mmm,” I replied.
He swallowed and leaned in closer. “I love you.”
My head was foggy from the painkiller, but I think I smiled back at him.
Then he whispered, “The bullet went through,” he paused for effect, “your left love handle.”
I got shot in the love handles?
“So maybe it’s a good thing you put on some extra pounds,” he went on. The gray eyes we
re twinkling. “Otherwise this could have been worse.”
I closed my eyes and prayed for death.
I drifted back off to sleep.
It seemed like we were only there a few minutes, but we were actually at the hospital for just over three hours. The time flew past in a blur—primarily because of the painkillers, and I also kept falling back asleep. I stayed groggy and barely conscious as they kept giving me more painkillers and antibiotics and shining lights into my eyes and kneading my side and listening to my heart and lungs and taking blood pressure and monitoring the beeping machines next to the bed.
I just floated through it all on a euphoric cloud of pharmaceuticals. Sometimes I could feel the throbbing in my side, and at some point they also put me on a drip of some sort. Antibiotics, maybe. They’d tell me something and it would vaguely make sense but then whatever it was drifted away on the carefree cloud.
I kind of liked the fog, to be honest.
I lost track at some point of everything they were doing. I know at some point Mom and Dad showed up with Taylor, but I was too high from the medications and could only hope—when I cared—that Frank was making sure they were doing everything they needed to do. Finally, I had to sign some forms, and the doctor—I think it was the same woman who’d handled Taylor when we’d brought him in about a hundred years ago—handed Frank some prescriptions and made an appointment for me to come back in to have the stitches removed and be checked out again. “No showering,” she said, “and get plenty of rest. Nothing strenuous until I see you again. You were very lucky,” she went on as she signed my release papers. “Another half inch to the left and you’d be in surgery right now.”
“I’ve always been lucky,” I replied, giving her a sunny smile.
She laughed. “Well, don’t push your luck. Everyone’s luck runs out sooner or later.”
Yeah, yeah, I muttered to myself as the nurse wheeled me out. Mom and Dad pulled up to the curb, and Taylor and Frank helped me into the back seat of their green Subaru. “We left our car at Margery Lautenschlaeger’s,” Frank said, and Dad turned the car around to head back uptown.
Frank filled me in on what he’d learned while I was with the doctors. The cops had taken Amanda in, and of course Margery was summoning the best lawyers in the 504 area code. “She’s probably calling judges she knows,” he said as the car stopped at the light at Napoleon. “Venus told me that they found two bloody baseball bats in the trunk of Amanda’s car, so they think they have the murder weapons.”
But why would she kill Eric? That still didn’t make sense.
And why two bats? Why didn’t she just reuse the same one?
I was too doped up to say anything aloud, though.
The police cars were still in the driveway of the Lautenschlaeger house when Dad pulled into the driveway. The Jaguar was still where Frank had parked it. The front door to the house was open despite the bitter cold, but at least it had stopped raining.
“I’ll take the car home—y’all are in charge of getting him home safely.” Frank leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you at the house, okay? Taylor, you’re in charge till I get there, and don’t let him do anything he shouldn’t, okay?”
Taylor nodded. Frank got out and walked over to a group of police officers. I watched through the window as Dad reversed the car and headed back down the driveway.
Taylor patted my shoulder. “How ya doing, champ?”
My tongue felt like it had swollen, and so I had to talk slowly so he could understand me. “I’ve…had…better…days.” My eyelids began to droop.
“Just sleep until we get home, okay?”
The next thing I knew a dull throb in my side woke me up. I opened my eyes as the car turned the corner at Rampart onto Esplanade. I moaned, and Mom’s head popped up over the front seat. “Are you in pain?”
“Yes,” I gasped out.
She shook a pill out of a bottle and handed it to me, along with a bottle of water. I choked it down with a glug of the water and leaned back into the seat.
It felt like someone was stabbing me in the side with a butter knife…and turning it.
I breathed shallowly as the car headed down Esplanade, my eyes closed.
I opened them again as the car stopped at the curb across Decatur Street from our apartment. Taylor got out and came around to open the door for me. Mom handed me two bottles of pills. “You just took another pain pill, so you can’t take another for an hour,” she said. “And the others are antibiotics, one every four hours so you won’t get an infection. Your father and I will take the car home and then come back to take care of you. Are you sure you don’t want to come home with us?”
Sweating from the effort and the pain, I turned to get out of the car. “I just want to be in my own place,” I gasped out, amazed at the effort it took.
Would I—could I—make it up the stairs?
“We’ll be back in about twenty minutes, then,” she said.
I put my feet down on the pavement. The cold wind from the river felt good for once. “No need,” I replied. “Frank and Taylor can take care of me. And I’ll call if I need you.” I kissed my hand and touched Mom’s forehead. “Don’t go all Mama Bear on me, Mom. I love you both, but I’ll be okay.”
I closed the car door and shuffled across the street. The cold wind was kind of bracing, and I looked back to wave at Mom and Dad while Taylor fiddled with the keys to the gate.
By the time I’d shuffled down the passageway into the courtyard, the pain was completely gone and my brain was feeling pleasantly fluffy again. This, I thought, is why people get hooked on opioids. I had to stop to catch my breath a few times on my way up the stairs, Taylor patiently waiting for me until I could focus on climbing the next step.
When I finally reached the landing outside our apartment door, Taylor got the door unlocked. I had a brief moment of anxiety—what if there’s a Russian here I am completely useless at this point—but then remembered Lindy and Rhoda were watching things and stepped through the door into the apartment.
Taylor helped me into the bedroom and I sat down hard on the bed with a sigh of relief. He helped me get undressed and into my sweats, then into bed.
“You sure you don’t need anything?” Taylor asked. “Let me get you some water for your nightstand, so you can take your pills.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against my pillow. My bed felt wonderful. It was cold inside the apartment, but even the wind rattling the window felt comforting now that I was home and in my own bed.
Taylor put the glass of water down next to my pill bottles on the nightstand.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “It’s been a hell of a few days, hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “It’s a lot to process, but yeah, I think I’m going to be okay, really. I’m having lunch with my mom tomorrow. I know—you don’t have to say it, I know how you feel about my parents, and my stupid father trying to send me to gay conversion therapy hasn’t helped. But Mom says she’s sorry. She should have stood up to my father before and has been sorry ever since that she didn’t. This kidnapping and gay conversion thing was the last straw. She says she’s going to divorce him if he doesn’t straighten up.”
“Mmmm-hmmmm.”
“Are you being a dick, or can you not talk?”
“I can talk.” My tongue felt like it was too big for my mouth, and the words came out slurred. “Just…want…you…to…be…happy.”
“I know.” He smiled at me, and it was almost like his pre–Eric Brewer smile, but there was a sadness to his eyes that broke my heart just a little bit. His smile still lit up his handsome, heartbreakingly young face, but not quite as brightly as it used to before Eric Brewer got him into his clutches.
I hoped that his light would shine again as bright as it had before, in time.
He is a creature of light and love, I heard the Goddess’s voice in my head say again.
“I’m still not happy with either one of them,” he went on. “And if we’
re going to have a relationship—well, they are my parents and I’d like to have some relationship with them. And it is Christmas season and all…and,” he patted my leg, “I’d hate for something to happen to them before we had a chance to try to make up, you know?”
“You’re such a good kid,” I slurred. “They should be proud of you.”
He nodded and grinned at me shyly. “Yes, they should. Mom thinks my dad is thinking a bit more clearly now—I guess the Ninjas put the fear of God into him.” His face clouded over. “But if it’s going to be conversion therapy or just telling me over and over that I’m going to hell, well…” And now the smile did completely light up his face, the way it used to, and I was so happy my eyes began to tear up. “I have my new family, and it’s so awesome I don’t need to have any other family, you know?” He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Do you need anything?”
I shook my head. “I just want to sleep for a little while.”
Taylor nodded. “The painkillers. Go ahead and fall asleep, Scotty. I’ll just sit here and play games on my phone so I’m here if you need me.”
Such a great kid, I thought, and drifted off to sleep.
I woke up in the early morning light. Frank was snoring next to me—I’d know that snore anywhere—and my wound was aching slightly. I took a deep breath and sat up in the bed, which made the throbbing only slightly worse. I managed to get to my feet and, with some deep breaths along the way, hobbled into the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. I knew I couldn’t get the bandage wet, so a shower was out of the question, but the hot water felt good on my face.
Shivering, I pulled on my robe and slipped on my house shoes and padded down to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. The throbbing wasn’t great, I thought as the Keurig brewed my Starbucks Italian Roast, but it was something I could live with.
I didn’t need any more of the painkillers, fun as they were.
The last thing I needed was an opioid addiction. I’d stick to weed, thank you very much.
I sat down at the computer and checked my emails. Nothing but junk. There were, I noticed as I started doing a search for Amanda Lautenschlaeger online, several vases with roses spread out on every available surface in the living room. It took me another minute to realize people had probably sent them to me because I’d been shot.