Hallowed Horror

by Mark Tufo

  “Come on.” He pulled her to her feet.

  “Where?” She looked up at him. The strong, masculine face. His dark, intense eyes staring back, the thick brows drawn together making deep wrinkles in his brow.

  “Do I have to say it?”

  ◦ Chapter 12

  “Are you tired?”

  “Physically, emotionally, or spiritually, Drake with no last name?”

  “All, I guess. You are, aren't you. Tired, I mean.”

  Tamsin nodded, staring out the window as the bright lights of the city flashed by.

  Drake drove them back to the fortified bunker and Tamsin let him. She shouldn't have, she knew that. Knew that letting him take her back meant surrender. Not physically. Though that was obviously on the table after last night. All those hours ago, she thought she could handle giving in to the temptation for touch. The sweet, sublime touch of man to woman. Carpe diem and all the other justifications she had fed herself before the plunge into ecstasy.

  What an idiot.

  Sitting here in his big car, the engine rumbling like the growl of a large animal, she realized she had forgotten. No, that's not right. She'd made herself forget how absolutely compelling those feelings could become. Tamsin was dangerously close to surrendering far more than her heart. She might be giving up her sanity.

  After her transition to spirit, Tamsin went slightly mad. Lost in a strange, terrible world of ghosts and monsters. A phantom existence most human minds were not equipped to navigate. She clawed her way back up the ladder to sanity rung by rung. To keep herself sane against the complete insanity of the afterlife, Tamsin forced herself to look ahead. Never back. Make allies where and when possible. Enjoy the little pleasures every day in a body had to offer and always keep moving towards her goals: Find the Soul Eaters. Destroy them one by one. Locate the lost pieces of her soul and hoard them for the future. That list had recently been expanded to include assembling the four runes to create a sigil that might possibly, if the legend was true, restore body and soul.

  This man with the wide smile and thoughtful eyes threatened that hard-fought equilibrium. In fact, he'd already unbalanced her into a wobbly roll she was not sure she could come out of.

  Without putting it into so many words, Tamsin knew no matter what body she took from now on, she would always look over her shoulder hoping somehow, Drake would be there.

  Love is a physical and emotional safety net for the human spirit.

  But not lost spirits.

  How could he catch her when she could never predict where and when she would fall back to earth?

  Inside the dark, warm bunker, Drake took his coat from her, grabbed a thick blanket out of their nest and wrapped it around her shoulders. Quickly putting the sofa cushions back where they belonged, he easily picked Tamsin up in his arms and laid her down, tucking in the edges of the blanket. He was careful not to say or do anything that would increase the turmoil so clearly raging just below the surface. Kicking off his shoes and removing his coat, sweater, scarf, several pieces of body armor, two knives and a small, enchanted axe, he settled in on the other side of the couch with another blanket. He pulled her feet onto his lap, though he didn't try to touch her further.

  His eyes were heavy; his heart unaccountably light. It felt good being together like this. What an odd thing life was. With that thought, Drake slipped into the soft well of sleep.

  Drake awoke, turned sideways, precariously balanced on the edge of the couch. With no outside light, it was impossible to tell the time. Somehow Tamsin had squeezed in next to him, her head and arms over his chest, the blankets tumbled around them both. He saw through Angelique's form to Tamsin with no effort at all. The hollow-cheeked, angry face of the Prime disappeared and there the lost spirit was. He wanted to kiss her very much. Feel the smooth touch of her skin against his mouth. From this position he couldn't quite reach her lips so he brushed her forehead with his kiss. Lightly, trying not to wake her, inhaling the warm, sleepy smell of her hair and body.

  Tamsin gave a sigh and snuggled closer.

  A surge of emotion welled up inside his chest as he tightened his arms around her. Surprising in its force; revealing in its depth. The force took him by surprise. He cared about her. There was no point in lying to himself. He wanted to protect her, even though she had done pretty damn well all these years without him! Today as he travelled the city in search of her, his mind kept veering towards her quest and how he could use his tracking skills to help hunt down the Soul Eaters. In fact he wanted to hunt them down. Find, catch, and most of all,hurt them like they'd hurt this light-hearted girl.

  Tamsin opened her eyes. Blink, blinking herself awake. Enjoying the lazy, languid feeling of being wrapped in a soft, warm blanket. Beneath her, a heart beat strongly, broad chest rising and falling.

  Broad chest.

  Heart beat.

  Oh damn it.

  She sat up abruptly, her ragged hair in her face, looking down at Drake. Drake lost his balance, rolled off the couch and fell with a thump to the floor.

  “Ow.”

  “I fell...um...asleep.” Tamsin stumbled over the words.

  Drake sat up and smiled, “Me, too.”

  “I didn't think I would fall asleep.”

  Climbing back onto the couch, Drake slid one arm around Tamsin's waist and pulled her close, blankets and all. It seemed exactly the right thing to do. To be near her. With his other hand he pushed her hair out of her eyes. “You can sleep some more, go ahead.”

  Unconsciously Tamsin eased into his embrace, fitting into the curve of his arm, before she caught herself. “No, Drake, I can't. This is pointless.”

  “I don't think it is.” His eyes searched hers. “You must be able to tell I feel something for you.”

  “For Angelique...” she started to say.

  He put his finger over her lips before she could continue, “No. For you. You have been very much alone in this afterlife, Tamsin. That doesn't have to continue. Things can change. They can get better.”

  She said nothing.

  “I could wait for you,” he whispered, his lips just touching the soft skin of her throat. “If, when, something happens to this form. I have time.”

  In her mind the white flag began inching up the flag pole. Surrender as inevitable as the heartbreak sure to follow. He didn't mean it. He couldn't. He was just a man and men said a great many things they didn't mean. Or so was her experience. Maybe though, maybe she would let herself believe it. Just for a few more hours.

  They made love slowly, softly. Savoring each kiss, each caress. Exploring all the curves and hollows of each other's body in blissful detail. The cushions, back again on the floor, were arranged and disarranged in artful patterns as their bodies followed the twists and turns of their passions.

  She learned that running her tongue along the lines of his throat sent the Fae into shivers of pleasure.

  He learned kissing her back made her moan and press against him.

  Together they rode the surging waves of pleasure, pressing deep and deeper into one another. Until, satisfied and satiated, hot and slippery with sweat, they fell back, panting into their nest of cushions and blankets.

  After a time, Drake went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of cold water. Twisting off the cap, he offered it to her. Gratefully she took a long drink.

  “You must be feeling the lack of blood. You're going to need a boost eventually, to stay strong.”

  “I drank a little at the museum.”

  His eyebrows shot up very high.

  “Theo helped me. I didn't hurt the woman. Quite the opposite. She seemed to enjoy it immensely and I only took a little. Maybe half a cupful?”

  “She would enjoy it. Beg for more if you let her. That chemical you Prime's secrete in your saliva is positively orgasmic. You could drain humans dry and they would thank you for it with their dying breath. In fact that happens.”

  “That's sort of the impression I got. Kind of weird.” She ha
nded him the water and waited as he drained the bottle. “Oh, did you ever get your messages?”

  He gave a quick bark of laughter. “Damn, completely forgot to check. Other things on my mind.” He smiled. “I did plug it in to recharge.”

  Yawning mightily, he walked over to an outlet near the door and began thumbing through the screens. “Give me a second, I need to make one call before this sorcerer has an aneurism. He's left like a hundred messages, I swear.”

  “Sorcerer? Is he a client?”

  “Sort of. He's the one I got the beguiling charm from to trap Angelique. A bit of a snake, I think. Not to be trusted. He's got the touch, though. Big time. We made a bargain. Speaking of which, we need to talk about you and the Duprey's and what is going down right now here in town. The wizard is involved. Just let me make this call.”

  Climbing out of the blankets, Tamsin grabbed Drake's shirt and pulling it over her head, walked to the bathroom, stepping into her boots on the way. The floor tiles would be cold and no matter what Angelique felt, Tamsin hated for her feet to be cold.

  Drake's back was to her when she came out, the faint glow of the screen illuminating that corner of the apartment. In the bathroom Tamsin remembered the tail end of their conversation from the coffee shop and what she had been meaning to ask him before events kept interfering. “Drake, back at the coffee place when you said I had to change bodies again. Is that because of the Primes or the sorcerer?”

  There was no answer.

  “Drake?”

  Silently he walked to the front door and began sliding back the steel security bar.

  Tamsin's skin crawled. She had a sudden, awful premonition there was something waiting on the other side of that door. Something bad. Slipstreaming into vamp speed, she flew across the room, determined to push it shut again. Drake side-stepped directly in front of her and she ran full force into his back. His very broad, strong back. Ramming speed didn't even budge him. Tamsin was thrown off balance, onto the floor.

  He drew the bolt and turned his face towards her. She gasped. The Fae's eyes had gone milky white, his features completely blank and expressionless.

  The door opened fully.

  A sibilant hissing echoed off the walls.

  The little alcove in front of the door was full of something. Writhing, slithering, sliding, surging forward. Tamsin's hand flew to her mouth to keep from screaming. Snakes. Hundreds of them. Their eyes glowed green, forked tongues flicking in and out.

  She called to Drake but he never moved, staring straight ahead with his dead, white eyes. Angelique's reflexes took over. Back-flipping to her feet, she leaped across the room, grabbing the knife still on the kitchen counter from yesterday and attacked. They hissed and struck at her, lightening fast.

  She cut at them again and again. Like the Hydra of mythology, for every head she sliced, two grew in its place. Snakes were bad enough, but spell-bound snakes? Come on! She was not going to catch a break with this body. Some transitions were like that.

  Drake stood blocking the door. Swiftly she remembered the other bolt hole she'd found in the bedroom, the one behind the bags of scary gray powder. That was closest. Muscles cocked and loaded like a pistol ready to fire, she jumped, only to be pulled so hard to the floor the impact made her head swim. A huge constrictor had slipped lightening fast to circle the ankle of one motorcycle boot. The creatures swarmed over her. Angelique's body was not in top form, Tamsin could feel it. She'd used a lot of energy in her battle to reach the Puzuzu statue. Her museum guard snack seemingly all used up. Normally Tamsin would just have ignored those urges. Like Drake said, the Prime could eat normal food like a human. The blood, though, was a catalyst for energizing vamp powers. Red Bull for the bloodsucking crowd. Vampires had enormous skills by human standards, yet they were not supermen. They could be captured like any other adversary if you knew how and timed it right.

  Relentlessly the snakes wound their long, hot, sinuous bodies around and around, pinning her arms and legs tightly together. They bound her with their master's magic, gripping her as tightly as chains. The vamp in the Hummer had spoken of a father. This might be Angelique's father's doing. She was a Prime, which meant he was as well. Perhaps he didn't appreciate having his limo, not to mention his daughter's body, hijacked. Tamsin swallowed. Things were going to get messy.

  Drake stirred at last, coming towards her. He moved not with the smooth, lithe walk she had observed but a sort of jerky response, as though he was being remote controlled. He grabbed his jeans and pulled them on before picking her up and slinging her over his shoulder, snakes and all. He walked barefoot out into the cold darkness.

  Through the wriggling, squirming mass of snakes, Tamsin saw they were heading towards the Hummer. Maybe her shroud of snakes wouldn't easily fit in the back of his car. The limo sat where she'd parked the enormous vehicle what must be two days before. From the little she had seen of this neighborhood, that meant the Hummer had to be loaded with warding charms, otherwise it would have been long gone. He tossed her in with the vamp corpses, onto the floor sticky with blood. The icy cold had acted like a refrigerator, the bodies almost literally frozen. Angelique's senses reacted to the human smell of the turned vamps instinctively, her mouth watering. The spellbound snakes reacted just as fast, constricting so tightly she moaned in pain.

  Drake checked the rearview mirror as he turned the lumbering vehicle away from the curb. His eyes registered the two black Escalades pulling out at the same time. They were no concern of his. He had his orders. The cell phone rang several times during the drive, the voice on the other end giving him directions. The Escalades disappeared sometime around Jackson Park and Drake drove on, unimpeded to the dock yards on the rapidly freezing shores of Lake Michigan.

  ◦ Chapter 13

  “There are few coincidences,” said the man swirling the amber liquid around in a crystal glass big enough to keep a goldfish comfortably. “The attraction of particles applies to souls and spirits as well as the periodic table of elements. You were looking for me and I was looking for you and here we are.”

  The little man standing before her was not what Tamsin expected to find at the end of her journey with Drake.

  Not at all.

  Drake dragged her and the snakes out of the Hummer, deaf to her pleas for help. Through the snow falling thick and fast, he walked into a large, multi-story warehouse balanced right on the edge of the water. The snakes kept wriggling up and over her face blocking her vision. Despite the cold, the place was hot with magic. Angelique's senses switched on their super-imaging radar. She could see other bodies, creatures, things she couldn't even identify, moving within the building by the heat they gave off – or lack thereof – and the sound waves. Were they vampires? She couldn't tell. There was none of the familiar smell from the four vamps of the other night.

  Up they went in a big freight elevator, down a short corridor, in through a set of double steel doors, and then she understood. Understood and damned her naïveté.

  Drake stood her up and she balanced precariously in the middle of the floor on a Chinese carpet of pale, blue silk. The room did not look like the rest of the building. It was painted, paneled and furnished in traditional full English-manor style right down to flower arrangements on the side tables and ceramic dogs smiling from the marble mantlepiece above a brightly burning fire that sparked and crackled.

  Bartholomew Knightly, Soul Eater and all around bastard, stood before the fire grinning at her.

  Her heart sank through her chest, back down however many floors they'd traveled up to thud into the ground below. “Drake works for you, Bartholomew?” She managed to choke the words out from between the snakes hot, scaly sides.

  Knightly took a sip of his brandy and snapped his fingers.

  Tamsin's eyes flew to Drake's face.

  His sight cleared and blinking, he looked around the room, obviously puzzled, until he saw Tamsin. Only her eyes and mouth were visible beneath the hissing coil of snakes.

&nbs
p; His body rippled with tension, the muscles bunching. He tried to spring towards her.

  Knightly said only, “Stop.”

  Drake froze where he stood.

  “Do you work for him? Did you know all along?” She couldn't keep the tremor of emotion from her voice, her heart breaking at the thought it had all been lies. All of it. She had wanted to believe he cared for her, no matter what lies she told herself. She wanted it so much.

  Drake tried to speak, but no sound came out.

  Knightly rolled his eyes. “Go on, you can talk. For now.”

  He looked straight at Tamsin, “No. Never.”

  “Tell her the whole story. The irony delights me no end.” Knightly moved to the side table to pour himself another brandy.

  If looks could kill, the Soul Eater would have fallen stone dead from the anger in Drake's stare.

  “Angelique has, had, tormented me for more than a century with her sick games. She was the reason I had to leave Fae and make a new life for myself here. She followed. I hunted her. Which is no doubt what she wanted. Yet she always got the better of me. Finally I said, 'enough'. I needed a beguiling charm to lure the Prime into a lethal trap. Something very much out of the ordinary. Knightly was recommended and an introduction arranged. Angelique's clan, the Duprey's, run Chicago's dark side. I told you that. Knightly is looking to carve out some territory and we worked out an accord. He created a lure just for Angelique. Something irresistible that acted like super-charged catnip on a kitten. She lost all sense of self preservation.” He turned back to the other man, “You lied to me.”

  “I never did,” Knightly looked affronted.

  “You said when I killed her our bargain would be fulfilled. I assumed you wanted her dead for reasons of your own.”