Grave Danger

by K. E. Rodgers

  “Chas,” Corrigan shouted after his brother as Chas was almost to the staircase. He refused to turn around. There was a moment of pause in his step before he continued down the stairs and was gone.

  “Cor,” Clarissa was on the steps, coming down from the attic. “What was Chas doing in Ambrose’s office just now?” Chas still wouldn’t speak to her and Chas was Corrigan’s best friend. It hurt to know she was the obstacle that separated them. She truly knew how Yoko Ono felt right now.

  Corrigan came up to meet her on the stairs. “I don’t know,” he answered with a tender smile as he lifted her up and over his shoulders as he carried her up the rest of the way back to the attic. “He hasn’t been very friendly with me the past few days. Maybe he was looking for my brother and thought he was in his office.”

  He set her back down on the floor once they’d reached his attic room. Clarissa straightened her t-shirt which had risen up and twisted a bit from being hoisted over his shoulder. “Thanks for the caveman trick,” she quipped. “Do you do any other tricks?”

  It was as she was fixing her shirt that he got a quick look at her stomach. “Wait,” he said, reaching out and forcing her shirt back up again to reveal the smooth skin of her stomach. “What is this?” He fingered the raised skin just over her belly button. It was the mark of a skull just like the one branded onto the inside of his wrist. “Who did this to you?” all seriousness returned.

  “I’m not sure,” she answered, feeling butterflies beat their tiny wings against the inside of her stomach as Corrigan touched her body, sending chills through her entire system. “It only showed up a few days ago. It looks like yours, doesn’t it? Do you think when I touched the dagger it put its mark on me as well.”

  “No,” he said. The mark couldn’t have been made by the touch of the dagger. If it had it would have burned horribly at that moment, just as it had burned him. “Touching the dagger only revealed what was already there to begin with. Someone else put the mark on you. Touching the dagger made your system remember what was done to it. Ambrose has a similar mark on his left shoulder. He finally revealed the origins behind it after I had shown him my mark.”

  Ambrose had glared down at Corrigan’s wrist, his fist so tight around his brother that his fingers had turned white. He’d thrown his wrist away on an expletive and walked back to his desk where he sat down with a great sigh.

  “How did this happen?” he began, placing his elbows on the table he leaned heavily upon his hands.

  Corrigan at first hadn’t been sure if Ambrose meant ‘how did he receive the mark’ or whether the question had been rhetorical, as in ‘how did I let this woman affect my family so?’ In either case Corrigan spoke his thoughts.

  “It is the mark from an instrument of the death bokor, a dark order that has been designed to kill all paranormal infestations on this planet. Clarissa was one of them in life and has somehow been able to retain much of her abilities even in death.”

  Ambrose had drummed his fingers against his slightly scruffy chin. “And who is in possession of this dagger now?” His eyes had looked up then, giving Corrigan a measuring stare.

  “I do,” Corrigan informed him. “Clarissa believes she has hidden it from me, but I replaced her dagger with another of similar shape. She hasn’t, as of yet, noticed the difference.” Clarissa had thought to keep it safe, hidden away from him, but he knew that the best way to know for sure was to keep it where he could keep an eye on it. He knew nothing of the origins of this ‘Mrs. Connors’, nor did he trust her for the simple fact that it was in her home that Clarissa had found the instrument of destruction. “She didn’t know how it would react by her touch as I held it. It placed this mark on my wrist just as its twin is on your shoulder.”

  Ambrose’s brows had then knitted together in a frown. “And how do you know of my mark? I do not remember showing it you.”

  Anyone else would have been intimated by the rancor in Ambrose’s voice. Corrigan however, knew the truth of Ambrose and that put them on equal grounds when it came to revealing his knowing of the mark. “Because I know you better than you think, brother.” A faint grin pulled at the corners of his mouth, “And the fact that I was there when Margaret Ann was tending to your wounds, I was the one who carried you into your rooms. You don’t remember because I gave you an excessive amount of liquor to keep you from pulling open the stitches.”

  They’d had a run in with a shape-shifter that had gone mad and was more than slightly addle-minded or sick. The large panther had gone after Ambrose because it mistook him for someone it knew and in this instance hated. Truman and Corrigan had put the sad creature down quickly enough, but Ambrose had suffered a nasty gash along his left arm and part of his chest. Animal bites needed to be looked after quickly, diseases and other nasty side-effects could happen from just a single bit from one of them.

  Ambrose had shaken his head as if trying to forget the memory of the attack. “So now that you sport a similar mark you are free to ask me how I received mine.”

  He’d spent many lifetimes keeping this secret hidden from his family. Now the truth would be revealed. It was almost comical that Corrigan would share in its revealing, because the love of a woman had been and would be both of their downfalls.

  Corrigan touched the grinning skull mark over Clarissa’s stomach. It was a burn that would remain there, permanently, forever; or until the dagger was satisfied. She was watching him as he stroked her skin, unease in her eyes.

  “What are you trying to say, Cor? Do you think another bokor did this to me?” A horrible thought flashed through her mind. She saw herself, a fuzzy, blurred image of herself as a living woman arguing with a man. Then in the next instant she was on the ground, his distorted face over her body, the dagger that had ended her life poised over her stomach. Blood ran everywhere, rivers running in all directions from a body that was fast cooling. In the next instant the vision was gone replaced by the usual blank void.

  “You already know that,” he said, releasing her shirt and letting it hide the mark from the world. “You’ve always known the truth Clarissa you just didn’t want to face it. Do you want to know how Ambrose received his mark?”

  She nodded, finding her voice wasn’t up to a verbal response.

  “It begins when a man fell in love with the wrong kind of woman,” Corrigan began, taking her hand and leading her to a couch that had seen better days and more springs to hold up the cushions.

  “That’s not a very nice beginning,” Clarissa remarked with a frown.

  Corrigan brushed his hand against her hair. “It isn’t a nice story.” Sitting down next to her on the couch, he sat back, his arms spread wide to encompass the back the old leather couch. Clarissa sat back too, her head resting on the curve of his right arm.

  “I want to know,” Clarissa whispered, sensing the intensity of this story required it.

  “A man can live only so long before he makes the grand mistake that will almost always change his life forever in the worst sort of way and love is almost always the culprit.” Corrigan grunted when he received a sudden punch in his sides. “I’m just reciting how it was told to me, not my own thoughts on the matter.” He received a gentle pat along his side in answer to his defense on the matter of love.

  “To make a rather long and sad story slightly shorter I’ll skip some parts. My brother fell in love with a woman who should have been off limits to him. He had barely survived the massacre of his settlement several years earlier when the French Huguenot settlers of St. Augustine were brutally slaughtered when word had reached the Spanish King that the French had made claim on La Florida. Almost all of them were put to death except the few who were spared for their skills or converted to Catholicism. Ambrose was one of the few who escaped either fate. He later returned to St. Augustine despite his history and became a well respected man in the community, though none would outright admit an association with him.”

  Corrigan knew he was butchering the story and that he left out mu
ch of the important side notes in order not to bore Clarissa. Ambrose’s life story was more complicated and would take longer than several paragraphs in a book to encompass the full knowledge of him. Corrigan pressed forward with the tale; the last but most important parts of a life cut too short.

  “A fair young Spanish woman caught his eye. But as always happens in these stories, word reached the ears of the girl’s father. The matter was taken to the community officials and it was deemed that Ambrose was trying to use the delusions of a young woman’s love to sway her heart against God and the true religion. When the girl was questioned she agreed that Ambrose had tried to turn her from God and her blessed faith. Ambrose was hung that evening, the love of his young life watching as the rope dropped.”

  Corrigan touched his own throat, remembering his death. If he looked closely enough he could see a faint white line that ran across the area of his throat where it connected with his chest. Even now he could almost remember the way the blood and life’s energy had spilled from his throat to paint the sand in his death.

  He felt Clarissa’s fingers as they moved to touch the exact same spot, pulling away his hand and placing a kiss on the warm pads of his fingers before tucking his hand in her smaller cooler one. He rubbed the back of his hand along her soft cold palm as he continued.

  “He returned to consciousness along the alligator infested waters of the St. Johns River. He doesn’t remember how he got there or who returned him to life. All he knew was that he was somehow different from what he had been before.”

  Corrigan glanced down to see Clarissa’s expression. “I’ll skip the part where he got retribution against those who had taken his life from him.”

  Clarissa’s mouthed a ‘thank-you’.

  “It goes without saying that it was difficult for Ambrose to adjust to his new existence. Not only that, he was limited to only a small population of livings in St. Augustine to take sustenance from. His presence in the city was quick to spread and in superstitious times it was easier for people to accept that a monster lived in their city. He had to move several times to new cities to keep from depleting entire settlements. It was while traveling the country that he met my brothers. We didn’t come back permanently to St. Augustine until only recently.”

  Clarissa knew about some of this already from conversations with Henry and Eleanor. Corrigan had come to the States not long after his family had staked a permanent claim on the city by buying up most of the beach property, which expanded several miles north and south of St. Augustine.

  “Back when bokors were readily available, the number of flesh-eaters remained low. Even today we are small minority in the paranormal world.”

  “The mark upon his shoulder, like yours and mine, came from the dagger known as the Baiser de mort or the Kiss of Death. It was an instrument used by the bokors of that time to extract the heart of the flesh-eater. A way they believed would put the creature back in its grave. But luckily the bokor was inexperienced and by this time Ambrose had lived many lifetimes, enough to be too much for the bokor. He escaped without much injury except for the mark.”

  “The dagger seeks a new death to add to its strength whether the wieldier is competent to take the life or not. If the life is taken then the mark is removed and the dagger is satisfied. If not it remains until another can finish the task.” Corrigan moved to touch her stomach, holding his hand lightly over the mark that they both knew was concealed beneath her clothing.

  The knowledge that she had been touched by this dagger and knowing that someone she had likely known and been friends with had sought to murder her fueled Corrigan’s hatred of bokors.

  “Your mark remains on your body because the bokor who sought to end your existence failed. Though your flesh has moved on, much of you remain intact in this world. Which means someone is out there who may or may not know you haven’t moved on to the next world.”

  Clarissa held her hand over his on her stomach. She saw in his eyes that the truth of her death affected him as much as it had affected her. She shadowy faced man had been a bokor just like her. Corrigan hated all bokors and in some ways he had a right to.

  “Ambrose has existed all these centuries with it still on his body and nothing has happened to him.” Clarissa said, trying to steer them away from the possibility that she could be taken away him; that a bokor was still out there with a need to see to her extermination. “Besides the dagger can’t work on me anymore, I do not have a body to kill. Perhaps it revealed that I was marked, but that doesn’t mean anything will come of it.”

  “Maybe,” Corrigan half-heartedly agreed. Just because she didn’t exist in flesh and blood did not mean that she could not be harmed. “I can only tell you from Ambrose’s experience and perhaps it has been a small blessing to have the mark upon his body. Now whenever a death bokor is near him with an intention to kill, the mark warns him of their intentions.”

  Clarissa studied Corrigan’s face, remembering her first meeting with his family. Ambrose had seemed reserved while inside she’d seen he’d been raging. Did the mark burn when she was near? “No,” he said as if sensing her thought patterns. “He knew he could trust you, if only a little, because at that moment you had no intention of using your gifts against us.”

  “I never would,” she assured him as she reached up and kissed him on the chin. “I would never use my gifts against you. I’ve already seen enough to know that no good can come from them.”

  Clarissa rested her head back against the crook of his arm. “Did you tell your family of the death bokor the Eidolon council has been trying to entice to come to the city? From what I hear from the others, though I don’t know if it’s not all hype, is that he’s the best at his craft. That concerns me. I don’t think I could stand up to someone who’s trained. Henry – you remember I told you about him, he was the first ghost I met. He has been sent to sweeten the deal with more money I would imagine. I’m not sure what entices a bokor; a pick-up truck of sacrificial chickens. I still wonder if the council members don’t already know that I was one to. None of them have made a point to question me, but sometimes I have this feeling that they’re setting me up. What do you think?” She waited several heart-beats for him to answer and when he didn’t she turned her face up to see the reason. “Corrigan LeMoyne, are you listening to me?”

  Still no response, so she stuck her fingers rudely in his arm pits to get his attention. He seemed to come out of a day-dream. Then he focused his attention down on her agitated face as he rubbed the area where her fingers had poked him.

  “Did you hear anything I just said?” Clarissa asked on an exasperated sigh. He shook his head. “What were you thinking about that distracted you so?”

  “I was thinking of killing a bokor,” he said matter-of-factly. “No, I haven’t told my family of the Eidolon council’s new pet. I wanted to be the one to kill him.

  Clarissa inched away from him, coming up to sit on the edge of the couch. “What?”

  Corrigan’s face remained impassive as he watched Clarissa hovering on the edge of the couch. “I was thinking about how I would relish taking the life from this bokor who sought to take you from this world. I know he’s the same man you saw in your vision just now. When he reveals himself, and I know he will, I will take pleasure in ending his existence.”

  Clarissa was suddenly on the couch again, sitting up on her knees which made her almost eye level with Corrigan. She braced herself using the stability of his shoulders and leaning forward till their faces were a breath apart.

  “If anyone gets to take that man’s life from him, it will be by my hand,” Clarissa said, that secret dark spot inside her yelling in triumph at the thought of a new death.

  Corrigan’s iridescent blue eyes flashed through a sequence of emotions. He knew of that secret spot that at one time had been allowed to take its revenge against the paranormal infestations on this planet. She kept it in check most of the time, but sometimes he wondered if he was dismissing a valuable part o
f her because all he wanted was to see the beauty of her soul, the soul that he knew loved him without question. That was the part she gave to him and that was the part of her he focused on. Just as she focused on the frail light in him and not on the dark monster that they both knew he was.

  Your love is wrapped in delusions and fantasy. Your nature will turn her against you and she will kill you for it. The voice of bitter rationale invaded his mind.

  You will kill her… She will kill you…

  He pushed that hated voice away from him. Bringing his hands to her otherworldly face he held her head within the cradle of his palms. At any moment the love that they had found could fly from them, leaving them to take up their post as hated enemies. Corrigan would do anything even murder to keep that from happening. “I understand,” he said, stroking her soft cold cheek.

  She returned to herself then, pushing away that evil little voice and returning to the woman she wanted to be. “Thank you,” she answered him, taking up the short distance to reach him, taking his lips.

  As always when their lips met the world fell away into a hazy background. Lips met in communion of a love that connected two halves of humanities entirety, the body and soul connected through a bond as intricately woven as the threads of space and time.

  Chapter 21-

  Clarissa found her head on the soft worn leather arm of the couch, her heart – his heart – in her throat. Corrigan’s lips consumed her, taking possession of them in a manner most befitting the carnal beast of his species. Not to be a lack-luster partner in these situations she reached her hands to encompass the back of his head, holding him to her as the bare skin of her leg wrapped around him like the temptress snake of folklore.