Love's Battle (True Blue Trilogy)

by Angela Hayes

  “You bet.” I had a reserved place on the funny farm right beside her. “Just let me know when you want to go.”

  “This weekend if nothing comes up. Oh, let me call you back, I found something promising.” Faith didn’t even wait for my good bye before she hung up the phone. I rolled my eyes and dialed Hope’s phone.

  “True Blue.”

  “Hello Hope!” I drawled.

  “What do you want?” Her tone was icy just like before. I let it melt into water and roll right off my back. I knew how to play her game. Hope just needed a little enticement.

  “Nothing, just wanted to ask you something.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

  “Good. That’s fine, I can handle it myself.” I paused like I was getting ready to hang up. I was really counting to see how fast she’d change her mind. One, two…

  “Handle what?”

  “It’s okay. You’re not interested. I can find someone else.”

  “No really, tell me. I’ll see what I can do.” She gave in.

  Bingo. “I had a visit from Danton today and he’s going to give me an answer soon and my intuition being what it is, I was thinking you might like to plan the wedding?”

  “When?”

  “October nineteenth, if he’s agreeable.”

  “Where?”

  “Your call.” She’d love that.

  “Colors.”

  “I’ve got a pearl and ruby necklace I’m wearing.”

  “I’ve seen it, it’s beautiful. Dress?”

  I rattled off the web page and the dress number, clicking on the link to email her a picture of it simultaneously.

  “My dress?”

  “Looking now.”

  “Call me when you find it. I’ll be considering your offer.”

  “Great. And Hope?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  For an instant, all the ambivalence was gone. “Love you too. Now quit bugging me.”

  For the second time in a row I heard the dial tone much too soon. Tossing down the receiver I went back to my search. After find my sisters’ dresses I would begin the search for the perfect shoes.

  Chapter 46

  Desperate Measures

  Love

  As the last of the forlorn notes faded away I used my hands to still the quivering harp chords. Disgusted I pushed away from my stool to pace about my living room.

  Grimacing I rubbed my sore fingers. I’d played so much in recent days they had gone from bleeding to healing calluses. Sleepless night after sleepless night was beginning to wear on me. Tired of seeing the living room I walked outside to breathe in fresh air. In the three days since I’d last laid eyes on Danton I had finished outlining the details of the ‘Pink Tie’ event. I had begged and cashed in every favor owed for donations for the auction. I was only waiting on March to get here.

  Between Kate and myself we’d finished the final outline for the new theme display that would consist of Egypt’s Pharaohs, mummies, pyramids, and treasure. It was all about treasure. Treasure lost and treasure found.

  We’d start by highlighting the 1849 Gold Rush of California. Move on to the famous ship wreck of the SS Central America which is said to have contributed to the Panic of 1857 when in September of that year the ship was caught in a hurricane. During the storm four hundred plus passengers and crew were lost to the sea murky depths as were thirty-thousand pounds of gold that translated to the rough equivalent of two million USD. The exhibits will then tie in the history of the Aztec’s and their golden harvest from the Earth.

  Going with Kate’s idea we’ll cover the heavens with displays on air and space, focusing on the Wright Brother’s accomplishments, the Hindenburg tragedy, the Space

  Race, and NASA’s following expeditions among the stars and planets. Not to mention the many trips to Mars and an interactive station that would define the constellations.

  Toss in exhibits featuring the many man made buildings that rivaled the pyramids, a compare and contrast of Star Wars vs. Star Trek, and you’ve got several well rounded education and entertaining museum displays.

  During the last few days I’d put in and was waiting on several return calls begging to borrow the certain items I would need. Everything from artifacts, newspaper clippings, original drawings, replicas, basically anything I could put my hands on that would make this showing a success. Three months of work done in a matter of days.

  I had somewhat finished planning my dream wedding- minus the location, cake, flowers, invitations, and one particularly important person that is. You couldn’t very well have a wedding without a groom could you? Of course not, it went without saying. But the dress, oh I had the dress all right and a kicking pair of shoes to match.

  Avoiding the TV and my favorite books like the plague has been a number one priority. If I couldn’t have a happy ending I didn’t want anyone else to either-even if they were only fictional characters. Okay, so I’m pouting, who can blame me? Problem is that while I’ve been drawing up a list of names for our future children- the father in question has been a no show.

  I was running out of things to do to keep busy and I was starting to get desperate. If Danton didn’t call or show up soon things were going to get bad.

  At loose ends I walked back inside to roam my small space, searching for something to do while I waited for the phone to ring. I picked up a discarded magazine from the freshly steamed rug, thumbed through it where I stood, tossed it onto the couch. Seconds later I picked it up and tossed it in the trash- I wouldn’t read it again.

  Grabbing a dust rag and bottle of multipurpose cleaner I rewashed the windows, re-polished my knick knacks, re-straightened the kitchen, purged all unwanted junk mail (what little there was), re-vacuumed, and re-swept away every last inch of dust from my already immaculate personal quarters.

  With razor and tweezers in hand I shaved and plucked-discarding every stray hair that didn’t belong from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. I buffed, polished, painted, and creamed all pertinent surfaces. Going stir crazy I riffled through my newly color coordinated and properly alphabetized closet, deciding to do what I should have done weeks ago. I was going out.

  Instead of methodically re-sanitizing myself and my apartment any further, I found the shortest dress I owned, one that showed a whole lot of skin and left little to the imagination, and paired it with the tallest heels I could find.

  My plan? To find the loudest most jam packed place in Ellicott City and dance the night away.

  Chapter 47

  Danton

  My eyes felt like sand paper.

  I blinked them a few times to make sure they still worked. I was beginning to think the last hundred books I paged through hadn’t been a good idea.

  Stiffly I got up from my desk. Stretching, I worked out the kinks that had crept up on me. Research was the pits, an endless snake infested pits of jumbled information. Snagging my empty coffee cup I went in search of a refill, the reams of information I’d ingested circling inside my head like sharks during a feeding frenzy.

  I’d managed to find a biography on Rodolfo Chavez. In it were mentions of his family and the monument he and his remaining older sons, Zale and Ziven, had erected in memory of the fallen young Jorrin and countless others lost to the War of Jenkin’s Ear. Estevan it turned out had become a doctor, and the young Mateo, a political official.

  The Siren of the Sea was now controlled by a distant male relative and had been retired during the seventeenth century when the current sultan revoked the letter of marque, effectively ending the reign of the Tunisian privateer. Passed down through the generations Ilori and Oringo’s tavern, Siren’s Song, was still operational.

  There wasn’t much information to be found on Love’s eighth life as Darla Prokop beyond a trio of unmarked graves and the legend of a town curse.

  As the story goes, the town of Ipswich went crazy during the height of the Salem Witch Trials. Along with many oth
ers they accused a group of triplets of witchcraft and held them in the local jail for days on end. Shortly before their hearing the Prokop parents escaped to Boston where they persuaded the governor into giving their daughters a pardon. Only the pardon arrived too late.

  When the governor’s man rode into Ipswich, the triplets were already dead, their bodies left where they had died. It was this man, Liam Farris, who buried them in the adjacent apple orchard. An orchard that refused to bear fruit or blooms from the day the triplets were murdered.

  Strangely enough it wasn’t until the last of the townspeople present for the triplets murders died that the trees began to bloom again, but to this day they still produced no fruit.

  These unnatural occurrences can be traced back to the speech Darla, or rather Love, made with her last remaining breath as she charged the townspeople to live with their crimes for the rest of their lives.

  ‘May your children and theirs be haunted by what has transpired here today so that future generations may know of your shame.’

  In a feat of unimaginable science, the original trees in Wilfork Orchard have continued to thrive for close to four hundred years.

  It blew my mind.

  As far as Minna Turpin, Love’s tenth life, that was another story. She and her husband were well documented friends of First Lady and President Taft.

  The newspapers were full of Minna and her sisters. In their role as friends of the First Lady, the three of them worked along side Mrs.Taft to entertain visitors to the White

  House after she fell victim to a stroke. On March twenty-seven, nineteen-twelve Mrs. Taft planted the first Japanese cherry tree saplings. Minna and her sisters, Calla Lovitt and Leala Fergus each took turns planting saplings of their own.

  In a strange twist of fate, one of the Turpin’s great-great- grandson had won a Senate seat in the last election, continuing the political line.

  I rubbed my forehead where a headache was brewing, grateful to hear the ringing distraction of the phone. It was a lot to take in.

  “DeAngelo.”

  “Hey Big D! It’s Jon. Hello. Can you hear me?”

  Probably not since he had busted my ear drum. “Yeah! Where are you?”

  “E-City! Why are you home on a Saturday night?”

  “Working.”

  “Bummer. Hey man, listen. I just saw your girl!”

  “Girl? What girl? Are you drunk?”

  “Nah man, I just got here. The place is hoppin’, but I saw your girl. She was dancing with some dude.”

  “What girl?” It amazed me at times like this that Jon was fully competent in his day job.

  “Your girl! The one who crashed your cousins wedding! Crazy eyes, smoking’ bod. She was dancing with some guy, then she hit the john. Not me Jon, haha, but john- you know, the throne room. Went in with a whole gaggle of fem’s.”

  The frantic beat of the second hand rhythm, pouring through the phone, matched the one now pounding in my head. Love was out dancing with someone else! So much for true love.

  “Hey, can you hear me?” Jon yelled.

  “Yeah, I can hear you.”

  “Look man,” Jon apologized, his jovial attitude on pause for the moment. “I’m sorry. I just thought you should know.”

  “No. Don’t worry about it. It’s all right. Thanks for the call. Have fun.”

  As I hung up the phone, my simmering headache blew into a migraine. I couldn’t tell what hurt worse, my head or my heart.

  As the research began to prove true all of what Love had said about her past lives, I’d begun to cling to the chance that with her by my side I wouldn’t turn out like my mother- a woman torn in so many directions that it amazed me she could still piece herself together- or like my father- a man who pined for the woman he’d been living without for fifteen years because he was too proud to apologize and ask for a second chance.

  Well, I wasn’t my parents. I knew the direction I wanted my life to go in and I wasn’t too proud to beg the woman I loved for a second chance. Prior husbands be damned. They were all dead anyway. If Love thought she could toss me over for some bozo, she had another thing coming.

  Grabbing my keys I hurried out the door ready to confront Love. I was so caught up in my anger I didn’t see the girl until I nearly ran into her.

  Drawing up short I took the last few steps at a slower pace. Using my snail’s pace speed I took the time to look around. The child seemed to be alone and that didn’t sit right with me.

  Keeping a safe distance I thought the girl might have been crying her eyes were so red. That or she had really bad allergies. Looking her over I couldn’t see that she had been hurt. There were no visible bruises or blood.

  “Hey,” I greeted, trying to keep my voice calm. “You must be new here. Are your parents around?” When she didn’t answer me I took a quick look around the lobby. Sure enough there were no parents hiding in the corners “Did you just move in? Forget which apartment is yours?” I asked, feeling uneasy under her red eyed gaze. “Can you tell me your name?”

  Instead of answering me the girl took a silver comb from a pocket in her dark green dress that looked as if it come from another era and began brushing her waist length white-blonde hair.

  “You are Danton DeAngelo are you not?” The girl asked in such a thick Scottish accent I had a hard time understanding her.

  “Do I know you?” I countered, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

  The girl smiled, “Not yet, but we share a special link and I would know your intentions before you leave your house this night.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded, ill at ease with the child who spoke and looked so different. Obviously she thought my question was funny because she gave a half-hearted laugh.

  “You have phrased your question wrong, mortal. You should be asking, what, instead of who!”

  Inhaling, it was like I’d swallowed a handful of metallic Pop Rocks. The buzz of electricity swept over my skin as the girl began to grow tall. Her waist length hair grew until it brushed the back of her knees and the green dress she wore was now a somber gray.

  Shock had my knees giving out and as I slumped to the floor the woman changed again. Shrinking down, her smooth skin became wrinkled with age. The knee length white-blonde hair became a silver-gray that brushed the floor. Her gray dress was now a pitch black cloak that covered her from head to toe.

  In a swirl of silver and black the figure of the old crane gave way to that of a white crow. Stretching her wings the bird regarded me with the same red rimmed black eyes that girl, the woman, and the crone all possessed.

  With one last pulse of energy so thick I could barely swallow the crow again became the little girl.

  Speechless I waited for her to say something.

  “I am Avelbane. Bean-shidh, banshee, to the mac Alpin blood line and watcher of his daughters. You, Danton DeAngelo, have been chose to be Gra’s mate in this life.”

  Mac Alpin, Gra, mate, my frazzled mind struggled to make the connection. “You’re here about Love.”

  “You are male and now are consumed with regaining possession of that which you deem yours. Before you leave here, I would have you leaving for the right reasons. Now is not a time to make hasty decisions. Mac Alpin’s youngest triplet cries for you. She bleeds for you as she’s done for no other. She longs to be with you and like her mother, her pride refuses to let her crawl, so she waits. Determined that you will come to her. Every second without you is a dagger to her heart, but one she will bear so as not to unduly influence your decision.”

  “Why would she do that?” I questioned.

  “For a long time Love has refused to acknowledge to herself or to me that she longs for what her sister has. It is a desire that she has never dared put to voice, only thinking it. Never has Love had the same soul-mate twice. You, Danton, if you agree. If you love her as much as I think you do, you will have more than just this life with her.”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

&
nbsp; “Love cannot tell you herself as I have not let it cross my lips. I would not want you to go to her ignorant of what your actions will mean.”

  “I didn’t know it was possible.”

  “It was not until now.”

  I nodded my understanding. “How long do I have to decide?”

  “The day of your vows and no more. The promise lies only with you. It is yours to receive or deny.”

  “And I take it you’ll be watching?” I asked, the question bringing a smile to the banshee’s lips.

  “Aye lad, I will.”

  “You’ll have my answer then.” I promised, surprised I was not more taken back with Avelbane’s revelations than I would have been prior to Love. It wasn’t every day I had a life changing conversation with a banshee.

  “Very well mortal.” The girl inclined her head ever so slightly. “You shall find Love at her home. She returns within the hour. But Danton…”

  Avelbane began as I pushed the door open filling the lobby with the late night summer heat.

  “I find it curious you did not ask what the consequences would be if you did not agree.”

  I smiled, feeling more at ease with myself now that I had made my decision. “I only would have asked had I needed to know.”

  With that I ran to my car, ready to see Love.

  Chapter 48

  Desperate Folks

  Love

  At E-City, the music was loud and the drinks were ice cold.

  I didn’t dance so much as let myself fade into the background. Immersed among the sights and sounds of the club I attempted to leave my personal problems behind. With this level of activity, concentrating on one particular thought for any length of time was impossible.

  Nursing the same drink I’d been sipping on for the last two hours, I left the empty glass and money for the bill on the table. Gyrating through the throng of moving bodies, I spied the couples I had matched earlier. Jason was with his Tiffany, Sophie was seeing her best friend Charlie in a whole new light, and this one was about to meet that one.

  “Hey,” I shouted, tapping a well-dressed frat boy on the shoulder. “Wanna dance?”