Honeymoon of the Dead

by Tate Hallaway

  Everyone seemed to be yelling now, really helpful things like “Oh my God” and “Jesus Christ” and “What the fuck?”

  James Something’s face paled as Sebastian’s blood continued to spatter across James’s tailored, white button-down shirt and average-looking tie.

  Sebastian slammed James’s hand into the wall repeatedly until James dropped the stake with a clatter. Sebastian kicked it away, but it only clattered against the boot of one of the surrounding gawkers.

  I wasn’t used to sidelining it; I really needed to do something, even if it was without divine intervention. So many people had crowded around the two combatants that trying to move from my spot by the table was impossible. I got elbowed back to the same place.

  Great. I couldn’t even make forward progress. I only managed to end up back where I started.

  Meanwhile, Sebastian was going to kill James in front of a million witnesses.

  “You’re bleeding out, man,” said a long- haired, blond-bearded guy behind the counter.

  Sebastian couldn’t really afford to lose a whole lot more blood, it was true. Somehow I managed to catch Sebastian’s eye and gave him a look that hopefully said, “Drop the stalker and run for the door,” which I indicated with a jerk of my chin.

  He seemed to get it, because Sebastian released his hold on James. Taking a step back, he put a hand over the hole in his shirt. As if by magic, which I was sure it was, the bleeding slowed considerably.

  The crowd parted for Sebastian as he turned to go. I started to make a move to join him near the door when out of my peripheral vision I saw James raise his hand again. This time I saw the glint of something metallic.

  “Look out!” I shouted.

  Someone else must have noticed the knife too, because all of a sudden the bearded guy pushed Sebastian to the ground. Someone else, a middle-aged woman with reddish curly hair, caught James in a wicked, karate-style headlock, which seemed incredibly brave and stupid all at once. In fact, it was sort of the thing I’d hoped Athena would help me do, I thought jealously. I had to say I had no love for the whole standing-around-like-some-kind-of-damsel-in-distress gig. Give me some Queen of Hell magic any day.

  Using my own frustration and fear, I managed to elbow my way closer to where Sebastian was pressed to the floor. We were mostly calmed down when the cops came rushing in, brandishing nightsticks, and EMTs followed after with medical kits. The pandemonium that followed was much more suited to a biker bar or the Republican National Convention than a quiet little coffee shop on a Saturday morning.

  I tried to protect my head, while trying to kneel next to Sebastian to see if he was all right. Sebastian was hungrily eyeing the bearded guy’s exposed neck, as the police helped him to his feet. Sebastian lay in a pool of blood, not moving.

  Given how much blood he’d lost, Sebastian had grown so pale that if I didn’t know him I’d have thought he was dead.

  “What’s going on here?” a police officer demanded.

  “Damned if I know,” muttered the other barista, a dark-haired guy in a short-sleeved bowling shirt. “But this one guy,” he said, pointing to Sebastian, “started hassling this other guy”—here he pointed to James—“who like totally stabbed him in the gut!”

  With the cops here, people moved away from Sebastian and James like they had the plague. I was able to kneel down next to Sebastian and gingerly put my hand on his shoulder. It, at least, was still warm. “Hey,” I said gently. “Are you okay?”

  Sebastian leaned heavily on me as I helped him into an upright sitting position. The tear in his shirt was small, and the black fabric of the shirt absorbed the color of the blood. His jeans, however, had that telltale rusty stain. “I’ve been better,” he croaked. “I’m starving.”

  I’ll bet. We had to solve this crisis soon; he needed to drink to regain his full strength.

  The cops took one look at James’s spattered shirt and the knife still in his hand, and said, “Okay, we’ll sort this out downtown.”

  “No,” I said desperately. “We can’t go to jail. This is my husband. We’re on our honeymoon.”

  The cop, who had a classically craggy face and streaks of gray in his black hair, said, “I’m sorry, lady. But your husband may need medical attention, and some kind of assault just happened here.” With that, he slapped on purple gloves.

  Cradling his midsection, Sebastian sat with his knees up. “I’m not pressing any charges,” Sebastian said, though his voice sounded very weak.

  “Not sure that matters when a weapon is involved,” the officer said.

  Which was the Minnesota way of saying, “it doesn’t” so “forgetaboutit.” Sometimes you needed a handbook to understand the sideways, overly politeness of Minnesotan vernacular.

  Curly-haired woman handed over James to another purple-gloved cop, who muttered something about how it was safer to let the police handle criminals like this.

  I was fairly horrified to hear Sebastian discussed as though he was some kind of degenerate, though of all the days to wear leather and Harley Davidson . . . Compared to suit-and-tie James, Sebastian did look like the roughneck.

  If only I hadn’t stood off to the side like an idiot, I seethed. I wished that Lilith had interceded. It might have been mayhem, but at least I would have done something to help. I hated feeling so helpless. As if waiting for an invitation, Lilith heated my skin.

  But even as She started to rise, I smelled cinnamon and baking bread. The scent of Sebastian’s glamour instantly calmed the beast within. I felt Lilith settle with a rush that left me a bit woozy.

  Though it worked to calm Lilith, I could tell that I wasn’t Sebastian’s intended target with his glamour. He seemed to be sending out a broad “suggestion” to everyone in the room.

  “You don’t need to arrest us,” he told the lead police officer. I could see the amber star glowing around his pupils.

  But Sebastian had been drained of a large quantity of blood. His glamour was weak.

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say, buddy,” the lead cop said.

  I placed my hand on Sebastian’s shoulder lightly. Into his ear, I whispered, “Try it again.” Closing my eyes, I sent a mental, magical call for Lilith’s help.

  And that’s when everything went to hell.

  A tremor rumbled from my guts, and my muscles started jerking spasmodically as though I were having a seizure. Somewhere, far outside of myself, I thought I heard someone call for medical assistance, but where I was there was a war going down.

  My inner vision swam with images of an owl dive-bombing a hoard of cobras and a warrior woman raising a sword to strike a seductress singing an ancient enchanting desert tune. My brain refused to focus on a single image and instead tumbled randomly through tumultuous pictures. I felt sick to my stomach.

  The worst part was that my consciousness seemed unstuck in reality. I shifted in flashes from the present, where a nice, far-too-young-looking ambulance driver flashed a light in my eye, to some alternate reality where I alternatively took swipes at a woman with my short sword and attempted to charm snakes with a song. It was as though I didn’t know who or what I was. Was I Garnet? Lilith? Athena?

  My stomach churned as I floated in a space that was everywhere and nowhere. Finally, I realized that I could return to the real now, if I just let go of the magic I’d been trying to harness.

  I came to in the back of an ambulance. What, I thought. Again? This whole waking-up-in-the-emergency-room thing was getting old, fast.

  The far-too-young-but-kind-of-pretty-in-a-super-cleancutsort-of-way ambulance driver knelt by the gurney I lay on, checking my blood pressure. Oh, Special Agent Francine said I should have that done! Bonus. “How am I, Doc?” I asked groggily. I felt a little sluggish, like I’d had a night full of restless dreams.

  “Oh, you’re back, then?”

  I gave a little, weak wave with the arm that was not currently being squeezed. “I hate to be cliché, but where am I? What’s going on? Where’s Sebastia
n?”

  “I don’t know which guy Sebastian was,” he said, “but I can tell you that you’re in the back of an ambulance. I’m probably going to ask that you come with me to the hospital to be checked out. You seem to have suffered a seizure. Does your family have a history of epilepsy?”

  I shook my head. My vision still blurred between here and the astral plane. From the looks of things, it seemed my body was still up for grabs. I held up my free arm and examined it with magical sight. Armor sheathed my forearm one minute and the next it wore a purple, silken robe.

  The ambulance driver gave me a strange look. “Everything okay there?” he asked with a glance at the way I held my hand in front of my face. “Got all your digits?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, though really I seemed to be carrying a few extra sets these days, metaphysically speaking.

  The ambulance driver undid the blood pressure cuff with an abrupt rip of Velcro.

  With his assistance, I managed to sit upright. “Sebastian was the long- haired guy in the Harley shirt who got stabbed. Did you see if they arrested him or sent him to the hospital?”

  “Sorry,” he said, tucking the blood pressure kit into a storage unit under the gurney. “I lost track of everything in all the chaos. The police will know. And I’m sure they’ll be talking to you.” At my look of sudden fear, he added, “They’re talking to everyone. We should get you to the hospital.”

  “You know, I think I’m okay,” I said with a hopeful smile. Just then a wave rippled through me, as something happened on the magical plane. The air escaped my lungs as an invisible sucker punch landed in my gut. I grabbed protectively at my abdomen and clenched my teeth.

  When I got ahold of myself, the ambulance driver looked mighty skeptical. “I’d feel better if you went to the hospital,” he insisted.

  I’d just escaped the hospital. There was no way I was going back!

  “No,” I said, swinging my feet around to stand up. For the moment, the Goddesses warring inside my body had quieted enough that I could make an attempt at looking in control.

  The ambulance driver did not, however, seem impressed. So I went for the pity factor. “I need to find Sebastian. You know, this was supposed to be our honeymoon.”

  The ambulance driver gave me a you-poor-thing look. “You came to Saint Paul to honeymoon? Where are you from?”

  “Wisconsin,” I said, then realized how lame I sounded. “But we were actually headed to Austria. Our flight got canceled.”

  “And you were kidnapped,” a male voice added from the doorway of the ambulance. A police officer poked his head around the edge of the door which had been left propped open. Cold air came in along with him as he pulled himself up into the small space.

  The ambulance driver looked at me in surprise.

  “Yep,” I said, smiling feebly. “I guess that’s me.”

  The police officer took off his hat, and closed the ambulance door to keep in the warmth. “I just need to ask you a couple of questions,” he said.

  On cue, the ambulance guy found other things to do that involved being elsewhere. Once he’d extracted himself, the officer perched on the gurney opposite mine. The cop looked like someone’s dad—though not mine, since my dad was an aging, hippie, organic chicken farmer. He had steel gray hair and a face that had clearly seen its share of hard times and cold weather. Though not super-buff, you could tell this guy hit the gym more than the proverbial donut shop.

  “Ask away,” I offered cheerily, though frankly I’d really had my fill of law-enforcement types too. If I never saw a police officer or FBI agent again, I’d die happy.

  While he asked, I answered as honestly as I could in between bouts of “slippage,” when I’d suddenly feel the bruises sustained from invisible blows or a disorienting light headedness. Somehow, despite a steady stream of astral interruptions, I mostly managed to keep track of the conversation. Luckily, the officer had that TV cop tendency to recap before going on with the next question.

  “So what you’re saying is this guy, James Something, has been stalking you and your husband for days? And the altercation started because your husband got sick of it.”

  I nodded. He had a few more questions, but none of the and-why-didn’t-Sebastian-die-when-jabbed-through-the-heart variety, so I got through them okay.

  All at once, I had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of falling and had to reach out and catch myself on one of the officer’s knees. I held on for dear life. Even though my waking mind knew I wasn’t really plummeting through an endless abyss, I couldn’t quite allow myself to let go. The cop’s tone strained in a joking- but-you’re-really-hurting-me tone. “You’ve got quite the grip there, little lady.”

  Then the sensation faded. A presence settled over me that was strong and confident. I sat up straighter, with almost military precision. “Our apologies,” I said, my voice overlaid with another’s.

  The officer gave me a long measured look and then shook his head like he didn’t want to know. “Okay. Well,” he said finally. “I think that’s all I really needed to know. Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll, uh, get that medic back here, eh?”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” I said. “My husband, Sebastian . . . is he okay? Can we go home?”

  “I’m afraid he got a little belligerent with one of my colleagues—he tried to bite him.”

  Poor Sebastian! He must have been starving to lose control like that!

  “He’s downtown. I’d be happy to take you.”

  And that’s how I found myself in the back of a police car for the second time in so many days. At least this time I was conscious.

  From my vantage point in the cruiser, I listened in on the radio chatter and inspected all the gadgets my officer had in his car. I had no idea, for instance, they had laptops and cell phones these days. If it had been under better circumstances the whole ride would have been kind of cool. As it was, I learned all about Officer Hamilton’s family, how long he’d been on the job, and the scariest thing he’d ever encountered (think pit bulls and drug lords with guns). By the time we reached the station, I had him promising to come by the store if he was ever in Madison.

  During the ride, I also came to another, perhaps more obvious, conclusion. Sebastian was right: James was a liar. He’d said he was Sebastian’s protector, but clearly that wasn’t true. I hated when I got played like that. Worse, I wondered if it was all part of some plan to get me to trust him. Maybe he was the “master” the Illuminati boys were referring to when they thought I might die.

  Officer Hamilton showed me into a waiting area in the police station. Like my own father, I got the sense he thought I was a little kooky, but he cordially offered me coffee while I paced the scuffed linoleum floor waiting for news about Sebastian’s situation.

  The coffee was burnt and bitter, but I sipped it, anyway. Before he disappeared back behind the official doors, Officer Hamilton suggested it might be a while until bail was set.

  Bail? What a nightmare.

  Worse, the longer Sebastian went without feeding, the more crazed he’d become. The waiting area was a shabby, low-ceilinged room. Orange plastic scoop seats circa 1973 were bolted to the floor around the perimeter and in a double row down the center. The beige- painted cinder-block walls were decorated with safety glass-fronted trophy cases filled with curios of Saint Paul police history. A male receptionist or dispatcher in a police uniform sat behind a glass wall that looked like those bulletproof shields some restaurants had in the rattier parts of town, complete with speakers and a kind of transfer box. I guessed he must be an officer, since he wore a uniform. It seemed like a pretty crappy assignment to basically be the receptionist, which might explain why he looked so incredibly grumpy.

  A bit nervously, I made my way over to stand in front of the desk. The officer appeared busy shuffling papers and didn’t look up at my approach. I cleared my throat. He still ignored me. Finally, I said, “May I ask you a quick question, please?”

  The look he shot me c
learly said “no,” as did his tone when he replied, “What is it?”

  “My husband is being, I don’t know, detained? Booked?” I had no idea what the official police term was. “Is there any way I can see him?”

  As though disinterested, the officer returned to his paperwork. “What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Sebastian Von Traum,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said with a wry grin, “the vampire.”

  My heart pounded in my chest, and I felt the blood drain out of my face when the receptionist called Sebastian a vampire. How could he possibly know?

  “He likes to bite, huh?” The officer said with what could only be described as a leer. Was this behavior becoming of an officer? I didn’t think so. With a little rude snicker, he continued, “I guess they had to find him his own cell. He kept chewing on anyone who came near him.”

  He must be near starvation! “I need to get him out of there.”

  “Yeah, well, I hear he’s already lawyered up, lady. You don’t have to worry about him. Your vampire will be out before the sun sets.” He gave me a gross wink and then began sorting his papers in earnest. To make it crystal clear he was done talking to me, he picked up one of the folders and, turning his back to me, filed it.

  What a world-class jerk. If I were a cartoon character, steam would have coiled out of my ears. I really wanted to pound the guy in the head, bulletproof glass barrier or not. This was normally the point at which Lilith would have turned up the heat, but instead I felt a now- familiar rush of vertigo.

  My Goddesses must still be fighting.

  At least they didn’t seem to be involving me quite as much, because for the most part I felt fairly rooted in reality.

  I couldn’t go on like this. My body wasn’t big enough for these two. More to the point, I was really, really annoyed with the constant sick-to-my-stomach feeling. One of them would have to go. I needed to make a decision. Was I a devotee of Lilith or Athena?

  Time to think this through.

  Even though everyone had clearly suggested I should find somewhere else to be, I strode over to the plastic seats. Sinking into one, I put my head in my hands.