by P. R. Frost
I felt colder and lonelier than I had in a long time.
“How could you, Tess? How could you betray me with him!” Dill said, sitting beside me.
He didn’t startle me. I knew he was a part of the cold drafts swirling around my body and my heart.
“Don’t you like Donovan?” I asked. “Do you want me to be alone the rest of my life?” Anger began to boil up inside me. Anger that he still had such a strong hold on my emotions.
Anger that he had deserted me by dying.
“You promised to be faithful to me as long as we both shall live.”
“You aren’t alive anymore. You died in my arms, Dill!”
I jumped up and threw a robe over my naked body.
I had to get some perspective, some distance from this specter.
“I’m not completely dead, Tess. I can come back. You won’t have to be alone, you won’t have to waste your affections on the likes of him. All you have to do is get rid of the imp. Then I can be with you always. I can be your weapon as well as your lover.”
I paced. What did I truly want? Who did I trust? The man I had loved so well in life, and in death, or the man that sent my senses soaring and engaged my mind?
Logic began to percolate in my foggy brain.
“How?”
“How what?” Dill returned.
I peered at the insubstantial form sitting on the oversized bed in the sumptuous suite. He looked just as I remembered him from the last night before the fire; clad in jeans and a western-cut checked shirt. Hiking boots on his narrow feet and a Stetson perched on the back of his dark, glossy head. No trace of soot or of strain marred his face. His skin had color, a ruddy tone darkened to bronze by hours spent hiking in the sun in search of geological specimens.
And I could see right through him. I could never embrace a ghost as I had a living man.
“How could you become a weapon? Would you be the Celestial Blade?”
“Nothing so mundane, lovey.” He gave me his special smile, the one that reminded me of Donovan.
But the sight of his grin no longer melted my knees or drove logical thought from my head. The magic was gone. My vision was clear.
He was dead.
I wanted to cry that only a ghost would call me that now. Donovan had called me “L’akita.” I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded special.
“I would be different. Better, more effective,” Dill insisted.
“You won’t need the imp in battle or that traitor in your bed.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We are not in the presence of great evil.”
“You’re lying.”
“Tess! How could you. I love you. I could never lie to you.”
“Because I could always tell. From the first moment we met, I could tell when you stretched the truth. After that, you never dared lie to me, even when you came home late with the smell of tequila on your breath.”
A memory startled me. We had both drunk a lot during those short three months of our marriage. Dill more than me, though. I could barely remember a time when one or both of us didn’t have a drink in hand.
I shuddered at the thought that perhaps the great love of my life had been nothing more than a drunken haze.
“I can see that you need more time. You need to experience more evil and the limitations of your imp before you can fully embrace me. Before I leave you, remember all the books I made you read when I discovered how you felt about bats.”
Knowing facts about the ugly critters hadn’t helped my phobia, but I did remember odd things now and then, like the chiroptera—the handwing bone structure that supported the wings.
Donovan and the bat children all had very long fingers.
But his knees did not rotate backward like a bat’s so that they can launch into flight from hanging upside down. I knew exactly how Donovan’s knees were shaped. I’d kissed the back of them and tasted the salty sweat of his thighs.
Dill vanished as swiftly as he had come.
I wrapped my arms around myself trying to still the cold trembling of my limbs and my chin.
“Scrap, where are you? I miss you.”
Right here, dahling. Never far. Just sometimes out of reach. That man drives me away.
“Which one?”
The one who doesn’t smell right. A ghost has no smell.
“Did you ever stop to think that maybe you can’t be close to us because he is meant to be my lover and we need a little privacy?”
I know how to be discreet. I know when I should pop out for a minute.
“How about for an hour?”
Lots of things I can do in an hour. Or overnight. If I thought you were safe without me. I don’t think you’re safe with that man. If he is a man.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Oh, how I ached for that man. I really wished now I hadn’t driven Donovan away with my blasted sense of guilt and grief.
Scrap didn’t answer me. I was left to shower and dress and prepare for the day alone.
Chapter 13
SEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE morning and I paced the lobby of the con hotel. I hadn’t slept after Donovan left and Dill visited. Now I waited for Bob to pick me up for a breakfast meeting and then take me to the high school. My mind spun in odd loops of wishful thinking and bewilderment. Pacing burned a little adrenaline but didn’t help my mind.
A battered pickup wheezed into the porte cochere. I raised an eyebrow as Leonard Stalking Moon swung out of the driver’s seat and entered the lobby with firm and confident steps. He held himself erect and proud and ready to confront anyone who might try to kick him out of the lily-white establishment.
No one challenged him as he walked right up to me.
“We need to talk. You need breakfast and transportation.”
“Bob?”
“Is sleeping in after a long night of gaming with your friend.”
I chuckled at that. I’d pulled a couple of all-nighters with role-playing games in college. Then I channeled all of that creative energy into my writing and learned to keep normal hours. Bob only indulged in the need to game at cons. But he could cope, almost thrived, on about four hours of sleep during the entire weekend. I needed my beauty sleep.
Not that Donovan and I had slept much. My body tightened in memory. Then I banished the longing. Time to investigate Cynthia and the monster dog.
Leonard drove me to a small family café across the street from the high school. We settled into a booth near the window with large cups of trucker-strength coffee.
There were as many Native Americans among the customers as there were ranchers and truckers. Maybe they were all ranchers and truckers.
“I know that Cynthia is special,” I began once we’d ordered. “What kind of special that the dog singled her out?”
Leonard looked out the window a long moment. His eyes focused on something I couldn’t see, possibly something in his mind or another universe.
“The blood of shamans runs strong in our Cynthia.”
He fingered his knotted necklace.
“Why would a dog need a shaman?”
“The story is long and old. We do not share it with outsiders, or those who have no shamanic learning.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him and waited.
“We do not see Warriors of the Celestial Blade outside the Citadel often. What makes you so special that you do not need your Sisterhood to guide and support you?” he countered.
Touché! Scrap mumbled around a mouthful of mold he found deep in a crevice in a broken tile in a far corner.
One good thing about my imp: he’d leave nothing behind for a health inspector to find and quibble about.
“I’m a pain in the ass who asks too many questions.”
Leonard chuckled. “Estevez will like that even less than does your Sisterhood.” He sobered slightly. “Be careful around him, and his companions, Tess Noncoiré. They are both more and less than they
seem.”
I stifled my sharp retort. No sense offending this man.
He had information I needed. And, from the looks of things, I’d have to pry it out of him bit by tiny bit.
“Tell me about the dog.” Better to change the subject than dwell on my mixed emotions about Donovan Estevez.
“I can say but little. But trust me. My people have more at stake than you. We work to bring the dog under our control and our protection.”
The waitress delivered our food. Simple pancakes, eggs, and sausage. The huckleberry syrup reminded me of the hint of an undertaste in the ale Leonard had served last night. Flavor fit for the gods.
I used the few moments of silence to think of a way to get more information from him.
“The dog is a killer. I watched it murder two adolescent boys and maim a third trying to get to Cynthia.”
Leonard blanched a little beneath his dark copper skin. “Innocents fall victim in every war. Some die at the hands of the enemy, some from friendly fire.”
“What is this war? The dog is evil, and I am trained and commissioned to fight evil wherever I find it.”
“We fight the ultimate war of good against evil, Tess Noncoiré. Who is good and who is evil is sometimes not clearly understood by either side.”
He refused to say anything more on the subject. We left a few minutes later so that I could speak to the eight o’clock creative writing class.
“Uncle Leonard says I don’t need to talk to you if I don’t want, but I want to. I want to thank you. I need to know that you are okay,” Cynthia blurted out as I left the classroom. The third one of the morning.
I’d spoken for three hours on the joys of writing and the need to learn to express yourself well on paper in everyday life. The classes were the usual mix of bored-to-snores and enthusiastic participants. A few woke up when we started plotting a book as an exercise. I expected to see entries from them next year in the junior writers workshop at High Desert Con.
I considered my work in the schools as payback to the people who helped me when I was first getting started.
Cynthia had sat quietly in the back, the new kid in school without familiar bonds yet. She’d also had the seat closest to the door so she could pop up beside me the moment I walked past her.
“I appreciate your concern, Cynthia. Are you safe and happy with your family now?” I wanted to hug her, didn’t quite dare.
“My father’s cousin has taken me in. He has legal custody now.” She dropped her head and a shy smile spread across her face. “I like it here. It feels like home. We will visit the reservation soon, so that I never forget that I am Sanpoil.” One thing I’d learned in my reading, the people we called Native Americans preferred to be called by their tribe if possible.
“Good.” I gave her a quick squeeze around the shoulders.
“I need to talk to you about that dog. Something really weird is going on with it,” I whispered. “Are you sure he didn’t try to hurt you?”
She nodded, gulping. “He only hurt my friends because they wouldn’t let him get to me. Then he just tried to pull me along with him, not hurt me.”
“He tried to pull you along where?”
Cynthia shrugged and ducked her head.
Then I turned to catch the questions from the teachers and students who had followed me out of the classroom.
“Excuse me, Ms. Noncoiré,” Principal Barbara Mitchell, a comfortably chubby woman in a nononsense pinstripe suit, charged along the hall. She grabbed my elbow and separated me from the gaggle of lingering students and teachers.
She smiled warmly as she tried to assume a casual air.
My spine flared in warning. Scrap turned a darker pink.
The moment we were out of earshot she hissed in my ear. “We are about to go into lockdown. If you need to leave the campus, I suggest you do it now.”
“What’s wrong?” I immediately shot an anxious look toward Cynthia.
“Some suspicious characters have been seen lurking on the fringes of the campus. They’re wearing weird masks.”
I started to relax. “Probably just people from the con trying out their costumes.” Then my mind flashed to the too-real demon masks worn by Donovan’s friends.
I kept my uneasiness and let it fine-tune my senses.
Something strange was going on.
“A witness reported guns and knives. I’ve called the police.”
Some costumes required weaponry to complete them.
Con rules usually required a peace bond on them—a red twist tie or tag marking a promise not to brandish or unsheathe the weapon—while within convention boundaries. Who knew what kind of mischief they could cause near a school.
“We have a strict ‘no weapons’ policy. Not even toys. This is serious,” Principal Mitchell continued.
“Rightfully so. Kids need to learn that weapons are not the norm, in spite of television cop shows. Good luck. I’ll just slip out now and you can make my apologies.”
We shook hands.
Then I called over my shoulder, “Find me at the con, Cynthia. We’ll talk.”
But I didn’t leave the area. While I waited for Bob, or Leonard, or whomever to arrive, to drive me back to the con, I circled the school campus on foot.
Too much weirdness was going on. And my spine kept up that flare of warning.
Keeping to the side streets, Scrap and I patrolled, wary, ready to fight off whatever might menace Cynthia.
All of the houses dated to the World War II era, with tiny yards. A lot of them were duplexes. Clear evidence that the three cities had barely existed before the Hanford Nuclear Reservation started up during the war.
Maybe those demon kids are mutants from the radiation?
Scrap mused as we peered between houses and kept our eyes open to any hint of movement.
Scrap shied at the presence of a tabby cat.
I nearly ran after a German shepherd on the loose.
Other than that, we saw nothing suspicious.
Whoever, whatever, had caused the alert had disappeared.
Bob was early for a change and had to wait for me.
“I just needed to stretch my legs,” I excused my tardiness.
He shrugged and put his pickup in gear.
“How about lunch at the Stalking Moon Brew Pub?”
I wanted to talk to Leonard some more about that dog.
But Leonard’s assistant manager ran the pub that day. The owner didn’t show the entire hour and a half we lingered over sandwiches and beer.
Chapter 14
“BOB, YOU DO THIS to me every year,” I whined, looking at my con schedule.
“What?” He opened his hazel eyes wide, innocent. Innocent as a kid with his hand in the cookie jar.
“You open the con with the sex panel and make me moderate.” I only half complained. This opening panel was always well attended and set a comic mood for all the other panels. At least this year Bob had put a writerly spin on the topic. “How much is too much detail?”
“Who better than you? You write some of the most sensuous love scenes in fantasy. All your male readers drool over you.” He waggled his bushy black eyebrows suggestively.
I could only laugh.
Two other respected writers shared the panel with me. One male, one female, guaranteeing a mix of genders among the attendees. Surprisingly, the mix of ages was equally diverse. Maybe we could actually get a little bit serious and talk about adding sex to writing without tipping over into erotica or porn.
“What is the difference between erotica and porn?”
Gollum asked from the front row right after introductions.
“Men write porn,” Jim Blass, the male on the panel, replied straight-faced. “Change the author’s name to female and it suddenly becomes erotica.”
Big laugh all the way around. That set the stage. We kept it light and suggestive without slipping into graphic detail. A few of the questions actually focused on the writing and not the interpretat
ion. I didn’t even blush when Donovan appeared among the standees who couldn’t find a seat at the back of the room.
“Where do you get your inspiration?” asked a leather-clad Goth girl at the back of the pack. She carried a copy of Imps Alive under her arm. Her black sleeveless vest-style blouse couldn’t close completely over her ample breasts.
Then I did blush.
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of offers for a research assistant,” Jim Blass said into his white-streaked beard.
“Or if that doesn’t suit you, you could buy a vibrator and rent some porn,” I suggested. That set off a new round of laughter and suggestive nudges. On that note we concluded the panel.
Donovan sought me out for an early dinner before the opening ceremonies and succession of parties and dances afterward. We found a small circular booth near the back of the open coffee garden of the con hotel—the same restaurant from the con in San Jose, I swear.
Tall potted plants grew in a box separating us from the view of con goers outside the restaurant. People coming in to the restaurant would have to scan every booth and go around the service area to find us.
In this semi-seclusion, our hands reached for each other beneath the table. We scooted closer, forgetting to look at the menu.
He lifted my hand and kissed my fingertips. Small thrills coursed through my body. My eyes lost focus as heat and effervescence filled me. I basked in the excitement generated by our bodies pressed close together; anticipating what was to come.
I gazed into his dark brown eyes and lost myself in their depths. Every thought, every molecule of my being concentrated on him. I could almost read his mind.
A wait person hovered on the edge of my peripheral vision. “Chef’s salad and iced tea,” I said, not taking my gaze away from Donovan. Always a safe order at a con hotel.
“The same,” Donovan echoed, caressing my hand, his attention solely on me.
Thankfully the waiter (ess? I had no idea which) retreated.
Donovan leaned closer. His mouth waited a hair’s breadth from mine.
I closed the distance. His kiss was soft, exploratory, tentative.
I longed to deepen it. Discretion held me back. We had all weekend to get to know each other better. While the promise of sex simmered just below the surface, we both seemed more interested in the emotional intimacy developing between us.