by Stec, Susan
The screeching of an Egret as it took flight from the bow of their boat tethered to the dock was overpowered by the tyrannical whirring of a hand-drill. Lake Harris shimmered with sunlight; a soft breeze swayed Spanish moss draped from cypress trees at the edge of the water.
Jeni was leisurely sprawled out on a lounge between an elephant palm and a macramé hammock. She plucked a cup of steaming coffee from a glass top table and nodded toward the whirlpool under Susan's balcony outside of the screened porch.
"They're installing aluminum storm shutters on the other side of your bedroom, per Nana," Jeni said. "I don't think she's hurricane concerned, though. You?"
"Jesus, there's a house full of immortals trying to sleep." Zaire plopped down in a PVC pipe-chair across from Jeni. "Plus, batting down the place like a hurricane is headed our way would sure as hell have the neighbors wondering what we're doing in here."
"It was inevitable," Jeni said. "Got to keep the fanged oldies' wrinkled asses from frying. Gibbie and Jake took down all the crosses this morning."
Zaire pointed into the living room. "Nana's altar is still up."
"Yeah, I didn't think taking that down yet was a good idea," Jeni said and sipped her coffee. "She has Poppy's ashes and all those pictures of dead relatives attached to glowing candles. I think we'll ask first."
Zaire leaned back, extended oil-shiny legs and crossed her bare ankles, toenails painted black. Her skin was flawless; dark chocolate without a blemish. Head back, hands draping the PCV pipe, she said, "How long they been here?"
"Just started with your bedroom window." Jeni shut an open book resting in her lap, snagged her empty cup and headed inside. "I'm getting in the shower before they move around to the windows beside the whirlpool. Errands to run. Hope you get some sleep."
Jeni grabbed her coffee cup, tipped the last sip, and headed into the house.
The drill cranked up again.
Zaire huffed. "I can't sleep through this shit."
* * *
The room was dark, quiet, and bubbling with pheromones. Twelve council members sat relevantly revenant down both sides of the long beech wood parson's table. They were expressionless and cloaked in black hooded robes; harsh next to the white skin of their faces and hands, the only flesh visible.
Dorius was seated in a straight back chair at one end, flanked by Marcus and Antoinette. At the other end sat the Canis lupus italicus alpha, Karl with his newly acquired fangs. Impressive in stature, Karl was a natural blond haired, blue eyed Italian born in northern Italy. He was tall with wide shoulders and a broad chest. Karl was flanked by his first and second in command, Razzo, as well as Randy, the only black wolf in the Italian pachetto, an intelligent and refined businessman in the flesh and a fierce fighter in fur. Razzo was a brute of a man, all muscle and feral eyes, a thick neck above black hair curling under his Adam's apple. He sat on the other side of Karl. His breast was wide, his back wider, extending into heavy arms with black curls covering the area from his rolled up shirt-sleeves to his wrists. Razzo could put down a full-grown shifter, and was just as visceral as Randy while in wolf form.
Candles at the ends of the table lit the faces of both parties, giving harshness to their stern glares.
"I wanted to kill you," Karl said. "But then, I always want to kill you." His eyes were harsh as he stared at Dorius. "I detest my vampiric fangs."
The council members' heads swiveled to the front of the room in unison. Dorius sat rigid, back to closed and guarded hardwood doors with hammered-metal trimmings. The immortals were heavily armed and stood at attention, unmoving, unblinking.
"I would think you'd be gratefully undead," Dorius jabbed.
The council member's eyes dilated to solid ebony orbs and followed Dorius's words to Karl.
Karl sneered. "I. Am. An. Abomination! And I owe that to your new sideshow immortals and your reckless, inadequate management skills as their leader."
Marcus leaned forward to speak, but with an inaudible order from Dorius, Marcus placed a hand next to his brother's on the table and said nothing.
Antoinette was not as easily influenced. In a soft voice, dripping with venom, she asked, "Did you hire the doppelganger to bring you an infected animal?"
The twelve members' stoic expressions fell on Karl.
Karl calmly but firmly said, "I did not."
"And we should believe this, why?" Antoinette asked.
Dorius's jaw tightened, but his glare did not waver.
The members of the council held Karl's eyes.
"Because it wore my only son, and Dorius knows this," Karl said as his eyes raked the Council members and stopped on Dorius. "What you do not know, none of you, is that the bastard murdered our pachetto's new Alpha," Karl said through gritted teeth. Karl's fangs dropped and the color drained from his face, replaced by a fire in his cheeks as they retracted. "I had stepped down the minute I became immortal."
"No one in the pack challenged Mark," Randy said, with a hint of sadness in his eyes. "He was our best resource. Now he's dead."
Razzo pounded his fist on the wooden table. "This whole hearing is a farce," he spat.
A thin crack ran from beneath the heel of Razzo's hand to the first council member. Not one black hooded immortal moved, not even a blink.
Karl smiled. "You know, Razzo is the Italian word for rocket. The wolf's temperament wins us battles, but it also kept him from becoming a pachetto capo." Karl patted Razzo's fist, which still remained over the crack in the wooden table. He then turned to his first in command. "Randy is a stateside shifter, no Italian bloodline, and, therefore, does not qualify for a leader."
Karl's fangs dropped, but this time, it was intentional. Hands pressed to the table, the immortal shifter reared back and roared. He dropped his head and hissed at Dorius. "I will remain the Pacheto capo! And for the first time in our history, you and I will put aside our battle, and together, we will find this thing that killed my son and..."
"And destroy it," Dorius finished.
* * *
"Well, that was uneventful," I said and slapped a bag of blood to my fangs. I handed one to Betty on the other side of the picnic table. We'd both attended the council meeting mentally, through our mates' eyes.
"I got myself all tingly inside for a second there," Betty said. "I was totally cheerin' my man on, but he went all quiet rage on me, let his sister do the talkin'. But did you see how he nipped your Marcus?"
"I know, right?" I said. "I poked Marcus a couple of times, made a suggestion or two. He totally ignored me." I'd even told him how sexy he was, made a few lewd bedroom suggestions for when he gets home. He didn't even nibble on the bait—so not like him.
"Sugar, those hooded ghouls are right out of the Walking Dead."
"The walking dead are zombies. Those 'hooded ghouls' are the oldest immortals on this earth," I said. "And wicked powerful. I can't believe one of them let Dorius suck on its neck. I bet he comes back with some new supernatural power or something."
"Ya think?" Betty said.
"Hell yes," Zaire said as she and Resi stepped into the kitchen. "Scared the crap outta me when we went before them. I thought we were all fucked."
"Who scared the crap out of you?" Mom asked as I heard the screen door squeak on the back porch.
"Mom, where have you been?" I asked. "You better not have hit Bingo again!"
"Mind your own business," Mom said as she stepped through the open sliding glass door by the breakfast bar. "I followed your sister. And it's a damn good thing I did. Do you know where she went tonight?"
The four of us stared at Mom, waiting.
"To the Tavares police department," my mother said, and slid onto the picnic table bench beside Betty. After she dragged some druggie into an alley behind a warehouse in downtown Tavares and bit him. I don't think she killed him, though. She skipped off—literally—singing, If you want to ride, don't ride the white horse, and something about being a bitch if you want to be rich. She sang the song four blocks, a
ll the way to the police station."
"What the hell did she do there?" Zaire asked.
"Aunt JoAnn isn't arrested, is she?" Resi looked very concerned.
"Hell no!" Mom said, arms rising, head shaking. "She mind-spelled half the frigging police station, including perps being booked. Then manipulated the badge on duty, who just happened to be the arresting officer in that tri-city, Lake County drug bust the other day, to empty the evidence locker and hand over pounds of chemical marijuana, meth, and street drugs."
"What the hell is she going to do with that?" I asked. I was shaking inside. This was getting out of hand. I thought the cocaine and red powdered crap was just a phase, not a frigging addiction. "Can immortals become addicted to drugs?" I asked anyone who was listening.
Resi sighed. "I would've said no before Raphael cursed us, but now I'm not sure. You don't think Aunt JoAnn is addicted to street drugs, do you?"
"That, and selling it," Mom added as she flipped open the laptop.
"Who's selling what?" Christopher asked from the front door.
I didn't hear the door open, but I heard it shut before he walked into the room.
"JoAnn just ripped off the fucking Tavares police department," Zaire said.
After Christopher had stopped laughing, he said, "I wish I were there to see that. Did she get arrested for selling the stuff?"
"No," Mom said matter-of-factly. "She snorted half a baggie as she loaded the rest of the stash into her Ford Explorer."
"Where is she now?" I half growled, half yelped.
"In the garage with the raccoon you guys caught last night," Mom said.
"Oh, hell no!" Resi and Zaire both yelled as they whizzed toward the downstairs door to the garage.
Betty and I jumped up to follow. Christopher was evidently laughing too hard to move, because he got there after we opened the door.
JoAnn was sitting on the cement floor in the garage, sucking on her most feared creature's neck. The raccoon wasn't moving.
My sister lifted her face; lips covered in blood. "I had to kill the druggie bastard. He tried to rip me off."
Since nobody else was asking, I did. "Do you mean the raccoon with the slit in its ear?" My voice was soft and hopeful.
JoAnn swiped blood off her mouth with the back of her hand and tossed the limp raccoon back in the cage. "Nope. Uh uh. I killed the druggie who got me high on H, and then tried to steal my stash." Her eyes raked over us. "Any of you ride the white horse?"
I noticed Resi and Zaire looked tense.
JoAnn shut the cage door and said, "It's good shit." She picked up a chain and a locked padlock, wobbled to her feet, and shook the chain. "You should've left the key." She tossed the broken chain at Resi and Zaire, opened the back door of her Ford, and dragged three big trash bags out.
Heaving them over her back, JoAnn kicked the Explorer's door shut and hobbled toward the door to the house. "I hope y'all appreciate me. I don't want any of you to bother me again about that damn raccoon. I let it bite me, sucked on its neck, and told the damn thing it was your bitch, Resi, so do whatever you want with him. Just keep the bastard away from me from this day forward." She turned as she stepped through the door. "I'm going to bed. I'm dead on my feet. Try and keep the volume down, okay?"
When the back door shut, we all stood silently for a few minutes until we heard a grunt behind us and turned to watch as the garage door rolled up and slowly revealed a man with a gun. He asked, "Is that your Ford Explorer?"
* * *
"I'm not all right with you going Down Under. Especially back to that bar, Purgatory," Marcus told Dorius from the dressing room that joined their suite of rooms in the Castle in Milan.
"Why?" Dorius removed a black silk shirt off a massive, mahogany armoire trimmed with gilded handles and ornate molding.
"You know why," Marcus said, pulling a billowy rayon shirt over his head and down his bare chest.
"Marcus, I was young and indulgent then," Dorius said, and laid a pair of black jeans on a velveteen settee by the armoire.
A knock at the door briefly ended the conversation. A servant entered with Dorius's polished boots. The silver tips caught the candlelight and played off the walls as the human gentleman placed them on the divan.
When the servant closed the dressing room door behind him, Marcus took up the conversation. "It took me a year to find you after you followed that witch down there. What was her name?"
"Penelope," Dorius reminisced.
"A dreadful woman," Marcus said, drawing a leather belt through the loops on his dress pants. "As I recollect, the demon would not have won you had she not bet your servitude in that cage fight you lost to her sorcerer friend."
"Enough," Dorius hissed. "I am not the same capricious rogue I was then."
"Still," Marcus said, standing after tying his shoes. "I'm going with you."
"Karl is accompanying me," Dorius growled.
"Exactly, and yet another reason why I will be tagging along." Marcus opened the door and swung an arm at the hallway. "Shall we?"
"Do not disrespect me in front of Karl this evening."
"Fine," Marcus said. "As long as we understand each other."
~~~
Fourteen
~~~
I was sitting on the screened in porch watching a ray of halogen light fall from a pole at the end of our dock and flicker on the slow, rolling water. Inside the house, everyone was just beginning to wake. The local newscaster on the television made it harder to hear Christopher and Lily's hPhone conversation in the living room. It was one-sided. I could hear him just fine. At least my immortal hearing wasn't totally failing me.
"Can I use the passport thing right away?" Christopher said. "Like, right after you bring it to me?"
I leaned closer to the pass-through window opened a crack over the kitchen sink. 'Bring it to me?' I thought. That was definitely not going to happen anytime soon.
The television newscaster got my attention as the volume went up, and I peered into the living room to see the screen.
"... caught what they believe was an old woman in the act of climbing into bed with male residents—four of them, Marty. The tapes are vague because the image of the woman fades in and out, but at this time, they believe all she did was bite the male residents on the neck," the newscaster said.
One hand covering her ear and the other holding a microphone to her lips, the reporter continued. "None of the gentlemen are injured, and all of them are unable to remember what happened to them. Although there are small amounts of blood splatter on their bedclothes, there are no wounds on their necks. Security tapes and blood stains are being analyzed by a forensic team in the Mobile Crime Unit stationed on the scene."
The camera panned the area behind the newscaster to show a sign—Shady Pines Nursing Home—as the blond woman on site tilted her head to listen to the newscaster at the news station.
"No, Marty, the nursing administrator does not believe the woman is a resident. And the buildings have been thoroughly inspected. The old woman is not on the premises. The Lake Count Police Chief told me moments ago that the mobile lab could possibly have an identifiable picture of the intruder by this evening's late night news. But he reminded me the image of the woman is ghostly on the security video."
I wanted to run inside and check on my mother, but the volume on the television went down and Christopher's voice became louder. "How long do we have?"
'Have' for what? I wanted to know.
"I can live with that," he said. "You?"
As Christopher giggled, I pulled my mind away from visions of my mother or sister sucking on residents in the local nursing homes.
"I know I'm dead, Lily," he said. "Do you always have to correct me? Anyway, I think it's a euphuism like damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe those are similes or metaphors. I don't know. Anyway, it really doesn't mean I'm alive. It means I'm alright with you being here for only twenty-four hours, our time. Do your Dad and Mom know?"
> Christopher gurgled with amusement. "Aw, hell, girl, hopefully, we won't have to deal with that," he said with humor in his voice. "So when do you get here?"
"You mean all you have to do is stand there and wish it?"
"Damn, I'm gonna love this shit," Christopher said. "How'd they get my fingerprint?"
"You've got the power to do that?"
I was almost cheek to the window and there should've been a reflection, but there wasn't. I hated not knowing what I looked like. It sucked. A smile curled my lip as I thought how much harder it probably was for Resi. The girl romanced her mirrors. As I tossed my head this way and that, trying to catch something in the glass, I heard Resi and Zaire enter the garage downstairs. They were talking about the guy with the gun that showed up a couple of hours before sun up. I was in my coffin before they got back from 'taking care' of him, and hadn't found out how it went.
The cuckoo over Mom's mini-altar in the living room chirped seven times as Christopher said, "Okay, gotta go. Everyone is finally crawling out of their coffins. Talk to you up close and personal in thirty." He paused and then added, "Right, but it's seven here. I'm talking our time. Be careful, and, uh, thank Lord Rahovart, Tormentor of the affluent, blah, blah, blah for making this happen."
He pulled the hPhone away from his face, forehead wrinkled, then said, "Huh? Yeah, we have Wi-Fi. Why you asking?"
"Who wants to know if we have Internet, Christopher?" Resi asked as she crossed in front of the window over the sink.
I ducked below the pass-through counter and cozied up between a tall ficus and the massive trunk of an elephant plant. Long, curly leaves fought with my messy curls. When I heard the girls hit the stairs to the kitchen, I wrestled myself free from the foliage and headed for the sliding doors.
"Later, babe, gotta go," Christopher said as I pulled open the sliding glass door and stepped into the dining room.
My partner stuffed his cell into the cute little pocket on the back of his Oshkosh jeans as he shot me a look full of questions. "What the hell happened to your hair?"