Grave Danger

by K. E. Rodgers

  “He knew what I was because he is a flesh-eater.”

  Clarissa allowed Leah a few moments to digest this before she continued. “After the town meeting I decided to venture out on my own to see these creatures, face to face, for myself. It was the only way I could think, at the time, to understand them. Everyone seems so afraid of them that there are little documented recordings. In order to take a monster down, you have to know everything about it, its strengths and its weaknesses.”

  “You were out all alone during their roaming hours. Are you crazy, Clarissa? He could have killed you – I mean really killed you, as in no more Clarissa; forever.”

  “I know,” Clarissa interrupted. “I know what they are capable of, the destruction they can reap on us. But, Leah, I had to know.” Clarissa looked to her open window, the slight breeze outside unsettling the sheer curtains to dance to the silent song of night. “It was more than just curiosity at that point. I felt like I was being led by some unseen force that wanted me to see them, to know them. And he was…” Her words stopped suddenly, forced back down into her soul.

  “What was he like?” Leah asked after several seconds ticked by, breaking the dead air between them. “Are they as fearsome as in the movies? You know you’re one of the few people who have actually met a flesh-eater and been able to retell the adventure. Only the council members can boast to that and they keep their distance just the same.

  Clarissa turned away from looking out the window. “I didn’t actually think I would be successful on my first attempt. And it was only by accident that they found me. They speak to each other on this stream of psychic energy that seems to flow naturally between each of them. I’m not sure how they achieve this connection, but from what I could overhear they use it to communicate when they’re on the hunt or to warn each other of danger. It was when one of them sensed my presence listening in that they came after me.”

  “Oh my God,” Leah exclaimed, her hands coming to her mouth. “One of them attacked you?”

  “Yes, and before I could even think to react the one male had me. He grabbed me and of course threatened me. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t afraid; I was. Then it just came to me. I don’t know how or why, but suddenly I knew that I could hurt him. The next thing I know, he lets go and goes flying off his feet away from me.”

  Clarissa looked down at her arm, rubbing the ghostly casing of her form. It radiated with untold potential.

  “But I didn’t know then that it was because I was bokor, that I could do that. Some of the council members can hurt people with the expulsions of absorbed energy. At the time I just assumed that I was like them.”

  Isabella Canova was the first one that came to Clarissa’s mind. For a person who looked so young and innocent, she was strong in spirit. Thinking back to when she had touched Clarissa’s form, the slight sting, it had only been a tenth of the potential she could unleash upon her enemies. Clarissa didn’t want to be one of them.

  “Then what happened?” Leah encouraged. “Why didn’t you leave, shift the atmosphere like the others?”

  Clarissa shrugged. “I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me to do that.”

  “You think too much like a human.” Leah flipped her long black mane over her shoulder.

  “I am a human,” Clarissa remarked irritably. “Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m not human anymore.”

  “I just meant, you think like a living human. Sorry, go on. I want to hear the rest.”

  Clarissa continued with her encounter with the flesh-eaters. Repeating part of the conversation she had had with Corrigan. It didn’t bear mentioning that she had kissed this man – monster in a moment of weakness. She blamed it on a twisted, morbid curiosity to see if his lips would taste like death. They had not. It was to the flesh-eaters advantage that they looked so life-like. However, inside they were dead and empty. But even that didn’t quite ring true to Clarissa’s one encounter with the creatures. As an animated corpse, they shouldn’t have that spark of humanity that Clarissa had seen in Corrigan’s eyes. Yes, his eyes revealed an empty void, but was it a lack of soul or a lack of something else?

  “He’s lying to you.” Leah grabbed one of the bed pillows behind her, holding it tightly in her arms, tucking it under her chin. “Grayson would never disobey an order from the community. He couldn’t have been out in the city during their feeding hours. He knows better.”

  She rubbed her face against the cool satin covering on the pillow. “They found him in the street, down by the river docks. I didn’t find out until the day of the meeting. It had happened the night before.” Leah closed her eyes, hiding her face in the pillow for a moment. “Grayson was the last person I would think of as a target by the others.”

  Leah made a strange sound, partially muffled by the pillow. It was part sob and part laugh. It was a reaction from the images she was flipping through in her mind; some of them happy ones of her best friend, others of his mutilated corpse lying prone on the cement wall by the river. Leah hadn’t actually seen his body, but she had a very graphic imagination, easily painting the morbid demise of a man in his prime.

  “Grandma said that he was dressed like he had been in his bed; no shoes. It looked like he’d been dragged down the street, leaving a trail of blood from his house to where they found him.” Leah looked up from the pillow, her eyes showing glassy with unshed tears. “It was like they wanted to get caught, like they were making a statement against us. What do they want? Isn’t it enough that we allow them to remain here, killing people, why isn’t that good enough for them?”

  Clarissa shook her head, having no reassuring answer to reply with. There was something off about the entire situation. The deaths had been brutal, but it had only been the S.S. member’s deaths that had been given the extra slash of cruelty by leaving their bodies out in the open where they could be easily discovered. No other bodies had been left out like that. It did seem like the flesh-eaters were making a statement, by killing the servants of the Eidolon, they were striking close to the heart of the community. Almost as if they knew and wanted retaliation from them.

  “No, he can’t lie to me. I can command him to tell the truth.” Clarissa remembered seeing the fire in Corrigan’s eyes when she had used that strange almost unholy voice to control his behavior. There was something within the depths of his iridescent eyes that said he had been compelled by a bokor before. Who? She didn’t know, but then Clarissa hadn’t known a lot of things before meeting him. Such as how extremely handsome and enthralling a monster could be.

  “Well now that they know we have a death bokor on our side they’ll be more aggressive than ever to get rid of us. We should tell someone. Once the flesh-eaters tell their own that you’re here, it won’t be long before they will want to take you down as well.”

  “No, not yet,” Clarissa said, urging Leah to keep her seat on the bed. She was on edge now, a sudden panic coming over her. “I want you to promise me that you won’t tell anyone what I am. Can you do that, Leah? Please, I just need some time to figure this out, before everyone makes a big to do over it.”

  “You’re asking me to keep this to myself, like a secret?” Leah looked doubtfully at Clarissa who remained almost motionless on the bed. Sometimes Clarissa seemed like any living person, even in death. Then other times, like now, there was a look about her body that made her seem more supernatural than even the supernatural things in this old city.

  “Yes,” Clarissa said, trying her voice on Leah. “You should go home now. It’s getting late.” She rose from the bed, intending to escort Leah to the door. It was still early enough that the young woman wouldn’t need to be escorted to her home.

  “What are you going to do, Clarissa? I know you’re up to something.” Leah came off the bed as well, coming to stand close to her. Looking up at the taller woman, she angled her head to the right, her eyes probing the ghost woman. “Your face betrays you. You obviously haven’t perfected the poker face. I can see your brain firing off a
t all speeds.”

  Clarissa grinned. “I don’t actually have a brain, Leah. So that’s impossible.” She had the semblance of a brain, as she was a doppelganger of her former living self, her human brain was superimposed into this other deathly form. It was the luck of the drawl that her ghostly brain functioned as well as the livings. Many were not as lucky, wandering aimlessly, usually categorized as a residual haunting. They performed habitual tasks that had left an imprint during the specters life; thus they existed in a mindless rut.

  Leah looked unimpressed with Clarissa’s evasive tactic. “Seriously, tell me. I’m not leaving this house until you do.” She had that serious expression, one that the living used when they wanted to show authority and control. Lately the living in the old city had very little control over their world.

  Clarissa had revealed much of herself to Leah. There was no sense in keeping the rest from her. The young woman had lost a best friend, a man who had much to live for. She of all people would understand why Clarissa had to do this – needed to do this.

  Forcing down the doubts that plagued her, squelching the thought that she might be wrong about them, she told Leah in a voice of little inflection what she was going to do this night. “I’m doing what I was bred to do. It’s why I knew I belonged here, why the city brought me to all of you. Everyone has a purpose in life and I have one even in death.”

  Clarissa stepped around Leah, going to the open window. She looked out from her second story window into the darkness. In a few hours they would be out there, scouring the city for the next kill. Tonight, unlike all the other nights they were allowed to feast on the living, there was a new force to combat with. It was time for all of this to end.

  “I’m going to hunt the flesh-eaters tonight,” she whispered out into the night. “Tonight a flesh-eater will breathe his last breath.”

  Clarissa heard Leah as she stood behind her. “Then I’m coming too. You can use me as bate.”

  Chapter 12-

  Across the Bridge of Lions on Anastasia Island, past the Alligator Farm and the supposed haunted lighthouse, far away from other domestic housing and surrounded by the natural beauty of wooded lands was the LeMoyne complex. Protected by high walls and a rough terrain, the land bordering the complex dissuaded even the most curious from exploring. Not that it would be in their best interest to do so anyway.

  Moss and other foliage covered the high coquina walls making the exterior seem almost invisible, blending in seamlessly with the natural world. If one didn’t know the place was there it would be easy enough to simply drive past the narrow strip of dirt road leading up to it. Not even a street sign marked it and most locals ignored what they couldn’t understand. So the LeMoyne’s were left in peace. However, unlike the drab exterior, inside was a different matter as the unkempt exterior walls and lands hid the manicured perfection within.

  The main house lay dead center on a property that covered a ten acre span, the rest of the surrounding land was protected under the wildlife conservations of Florida. No one was allowed to build near the LeMoynes and no one save God himself could force them to leave. Built also from coquina rock, harvested on the island, the two story house sat as a silent observer to the rest of the property.

  Ambrose LeMoyne, a man who like his name was the product of the two half’s of his parentage; half Scots and half French. His fair perfect skin and red hair he inherited from his Norman father and his temperament and ingenuity from his Celtic mother. It was from his surname, given to each of the brothers and sisters, that they were united, if not in blood than in faith.

  Ambrose had come to this country, traveling far from home, and settling along the St. Johns River when the French began exploring the new world. The French Huguenots made settlement in the wild and scary tropics of St. Augustine, but were quickly and expertly pushed out by the invading Spanish settlers. In a skirmish that devastated the French community, Ambrose barely escaped death, as he and his community were pushed farther inland. In a sick twist of fate, it was not from the hands of an enemy in battle that Ambrose felt the sting of death, but from someone close to his heart.

  The LeMoyne family sat about the large Elmwood table, imported from England over two hundred years ago. It and all the furniture in the house had previously resided in Ambrose’s colonial residence in New England. He was the last of the flesh-eaters left from a time in St. Augustine history when their kind had all but been exterminated. The now ruling Eidolon council had yet to have been born or had been tiny babes in their nursery cribs when the flesh-eaters of the area had been put down by the death bokors of the time.

  As was customary on a Sunday evening, the family would sit about the large oval dining table for a meal; a meal that did not consist of human flesh and blood. For a few hours every week, the motley looking group would behave like any other human family with a homemade meal and conversation.

  Corrigan stared listlessly into a reflection of himself made on the thickly varnished table top, the light overhead casting shadows under his eyes. Rarely did he ever catch a glimpse of himself in a reflecting surface. He didn’t even own a mirror nor would he allow one to be put into his converted room in the above attic. There was no room in Corrigan’s life for vanity and on the few occasions he had the misfortune to see his outer self, it made him realize what a twisted world he lived in.

  He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, with an attractive and appealing countenance. If he tried hard enough he could even be likeable to some. But the entirely superficial façade couldn’t hide completely the emptiness inside. Looking into his eyes, his entire soul or lack of one was laid to bear for the world to see. What was a man without a soul, but an empty shell?

  God must truly hate me, Corrigan thought. The powers of the universe had a way of challenging the creatures of this world. In his case, the great powers saw fit to give him the face and body of a gorgeous man, but they forgot to put anything else inside it. Inside was cold death, a vast void of utter meaninglessness and there was nothing on this earth to penetrate the icy blackness of his sluggishly beating heart.

  That wasn’t quite true. There had been something – someone – a woman who for all her annoying attributes was a brightly pure light, so much so that for a brief moment in this existence he had felt alive on the inside, complete. For that one moment of complete unity, Corrigan had known what it was like to once again possess a soul, hers. He wasn’t sure if she had been aware at the time that she had shared her soul with him. It was brave and selfless. If he wanted to he could have taken her, taken her soul, leaving her with nothing.

  She is your worst enemy.

  The woman.

  The ghost.

  The death bokor.

  Clarissa was all those things and more. She was a mystery he dare not figure out. For someone of her lethal potential she had very little self awareness, not even knowing she was bokor until he had unintentionally told her. And she didn’t seem to get that he was a flesh-eater, capable of extreme violence and destruction. No. She had stood boldly, not fleeing as he had expected and confronted him. Granted she was at a slight advance as a bokor, but not so much that she couldn’t be taken down. She was a foolish girl, playing detective work for her people. If he were smart, he’d forget about her. Whatever was targeting the Eidolon would eventually get to her too. She’d be out of his hair and his mind soon enough.

  And she had been in his mind. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was haunting him on purpose. Ghosts were infuriating like that. They thought they were entitled to the world and had a serious inferiority complex because of the lack of flesh and the fact that most of the living refused to see them. Like whining children, after awhile you just started blocking them out or you would go insane. Maybe that was it. Corrigan was going insane.

  That was the only explanation for why he suddenly had become infatuated by a sallow faced ghost who thought she could rule herself over him. She couldn’t. He would go back to his grave before he allowed someone else h
ave that sort of power over him again.

  Then why did he fantasize about that pale skin, the blue eyes of a divine being, and lips that had blushed and warmed along with her cheeks, making her entire form sparkle and shine like the sun, causing his own skin to burn and blister at being near her. It was madness to want to stand so close to her light, to want to reach out and connect to the soul creature that could bring him down. Corrigan didn’t realize he had masochistic tendencies. That was the only passable response he could come up with. It looked like he was as much a fool as she was. They both deserved whatever they got from this.

  “What do you think of my lasagna, Corrigan?”

  Corrigan barely registered the quietly asked question from his second oldest sister, Maude. Unlike her prudish and homely sounding name, she was a classically beautiful woman in her late twenties with long auburn locks that she usually kept in a perfect French braid; but when the few times she left it free, it cascaded down her svelte back like a living waterfall. Ambrose was a lucky man to have found such a wife in Maude. It was she and his other sisters who kept this mismatched group a family.

  Looking up he found his sister watching him from the other end of the table where she sat silently next to her husband. It took him a moment to realize she was waiting for a response from him. “It’s good. The best you’ve ever made.”

  Maude made a face, looking down at his full plate of vegetarian lasagna then back up at her brother. Corrigan held his fork in his left hand. It had yet to touch either his plate or the food on it. While the rest of her family devoured one of her favored Sunday specialties, her youngest brother stared off into space.

  Maude loved to cook. Growing up in a time when women were valued as wives and mothers, she stood out as a woman who wanted more for herself. She didn’t want a husband because she needed to be supported, she wanted love and companionship. At one time she had thought to own her own restaurant or culinary school, but such a thing was impossible as the food industry was still predominately a man’s domain. Her own kitchen had to suffice and now such an idea was impossible. The safety of her family came before her own desires.