by Kat Turner
The onset of twilight brought the distinctive cast of Taylor’s features into relief. Keen blue eyes as sharp as thorns, large pointed ears like a hybrid creature from a highland fantasy tale. An uncanny exoticism shaped her face, too, a lupine and feral cast. Her beauty was unusual, untouchable, too rare to relegate to the usual accolades or comparison to pretty celebrities. Striking came to mind as an adjective, and one not spoken lightly. For Eve suspected that Taylor would strike, if provoked.
“That leaves fire and air,” Eve said. They knew so little about what it all meant that there wasn’t much to say beyond stating the obvious.
“And the fifth element. Spirit or soul or what have you.” Taylor tipped her head to the heavens and their mysteries. Those first winks of starlight emerged as sky changed from blues to indigos. Bugs struck up a croaking serenade, a firefly or three greeting them in blips of electric yellow. A cool front slid through, prompting Eve to rub her bare forearms.
Eve drew a line in the dirt, allowing Taylor’s comment to settle in her thoughts and knock around a bit. She had a feeling she’d only begun to scratch the surface of this magical place and what it had to offer. “What now?”
“Let’s try the water.” Taylor hopped to stand.
“Lead the way.”
A short, muddy walk down an inclined trail paved with a scattering of wood chips led the pair to a stream. The narrow tributary flowed in a steady pace, humming its lapping lullaby as it sparkled in the light of dusk. A fat tree branch served as a bridge over the stream. Eve smiled at a plastic pail, shovel, and toy dump truck abandoned on the bank, charmed by the suggestion of children. “Do you know what you’re having?”
Taylor patted her bump as she sat on a large rock by the stream’s edge. Wetness licked the toes of her boots, staining leather dark. “One boy, one girl.”
Mud sucking at her soles, Eve took her place beside the expat. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Without further ado, Taylor leaned to the side, avoiding her protruding stomach. When she stuck her hand in the water, her eyes rolled back in her head, turning completely white.
Eve watched the spectacle with surprised interest. “Alright then.”
“There’s a few things going on.” Taylor swished her hand around, stirring faint splashes. A few tepid drops dampened Eve’s calf. “We have your lost soul…Stacy…Lucy…” Taylor scrunched up her face, diving her hand wrist deep in the tributary.
“Lacey.”
“Can you hear me, Lacey?” Brow knotted, Taylor chewed her lip as she waited.
“Are you picking up on anything?”
“It’s like a ball of voices, all blurred together. I can’t…I can’t tease out distinct threads. God, they’re screaming. Screaming.” Taylor’s pitch dropped to a trembling murmur and shook.
“Where are they?”
“There’s your fucking squirrel.” Taylor stabbed a free hand in the air. “But it’s not the squirrel, it just grabbed onto the squirrel. It’s like a hitchhiker, or hijacker. A tagalong. It wants to possess things….aargh. I just get these little bits. It’s got Lacey, now it wants you. You and her, you fit somehow. Like pieces of a set.”
“What else?” Eve croaked through a dry throat. She needed to get the drop on this squirrel-spirit thing and help Lacey. Information played a clarifying role, however scant.
“I have a theory. Hold my hand and stick your other in the mud.”
We’ll form a circuit. Eve took Taylor’s warm, slender fingers in one hand and plunged her other into the brownish-black goo squishing underfoot. Moist and soft and cool, it molded around her submerged knuckles.
As glop burrowed under her nails and invaded her pores, every saturated dirt particle a soldier storming her skin’s defenses, Eve spaced out. Her consciousness seeped into sticky wetness, a million tiny mouths sucking her fingertips and palm lines.
“Are you feeling this?” She directed her question to Taylor, though her bowling ball of a head wouldn’t turn. The earth slurped and nibbled her flesh, massaging lips stealing her essence and claiming it for their food.
Eve blacked out. A second later, she awoke in total darkness. Spots flickered in front of her eyes.
A cool, fleshy mass slithered between her toes. Eve blinked, vision blotchy as details came into view. She lay in a coffin, surrounded by poufs of white satin. Confusion and claustrophobia jarring her brain, she pressed her hands into narrow walls, thumped the sealed lid above her. A bloated pink earthworm, mottled with dirt, squirmed. She swallowed a scream, but her labored breath might as well have been as loud as one. “Hello?”
Air whooshed from her lungs, leaving her gasping and dizzy. She couldn’t draw a full breath. The walls collapsed, coffin lid bearing down. The worm, a shade lighter than her toenail polish, writhed over the top of her foot. Terror and panic seized her in discombobulating quakes. Her lips quivered. Don’t scream, don’t freak.
“You’re right, conserve your air.” Taylor sounded underwater, warbled and surreal. “I’ve got you. Lacey’s dead. Connect with Lacey. If your powers can make a through-line to anyone or anything that can help, it’s her.”
Lungs hot, Eve took three conservative sips of oxygen. She squeezed her eyes shut. Are you there, Lacey?
“It burns.” It came from a million miles away, but no mistaking the voice.
Three more sucks of breath, longer on the exhale to preserve the ration. In her stifling tomb, she could smell the carbon dioxide exiting her body. Funky, toxic, sour with bacteria. In the dank coolness, sweat slicked her palms. The worm lolled off of her foot and coiled by her ankle. Where are you, Lacey.
“I’m…I’m underground. I think. There’s fire everywhere. So hot. Everything hurts. Please help.”
White sparks danced in Eve’s vision. Her head swam. One more baby breath into her cramping lungs didn’t bring enough relief. Black spots spread over her eyes. On the verge of passing out, Eve focused what remained of her consciousness on the dark current within her. Follow my power, Lacey. Follow it.
The force gathered steam in the pit of her stomach, churning, pulling in more and more dead earth magic as it increased in density. Energetic ropes, knotty and braided umbilical cords the color of a deep bruise, shot from her hands and feet. The lines of power penetrated the coffin and stabbed into the dirt beyond it.
“I see it.” Lacey squealed with naked joy, unchecked hope that made Eve happy even in her weakening state. “It’s a rope with bumps in it. Like a ladder. And it leads up.”
Eve was panting involuntarily now, sight blurry and fuzzy. Tight heat wrenched her insides. But she managed a smile. Good. Climb it.
“I’m halfway up.”
Eve’s hands shook. A series of little tremors wracked her body. She slurped up a stuck fish gulp of air with a pitiable squeak. Keep going, Lacey. You got this.
“I sure do.” Something in Lacey’s voice disturbed Eve. A sneer of victory. Smugness. No. She was just lightheaded and anxious, her mind playing tricks.
“You okay down there? Your energy changed.” This from Taylor in her wobbling, bottom-of-the well voice.
Yeah. I’ve got ahold of my powers. I’ve got her. Heart palpitations followed her words. She was so close, renewed with confidence that she had a shot at rescuing Lacey’s soul.
“You need to hurry. You don’t look so good,” Taylor said.
Come on, Lacey. Eve swallowed into a swollen throat, greasy nausea spreading through her stomach.
“Listen to me very carefully.” Following Lacey’s order, two fish-belly white hands, broken nails long and caked with dirt, erupted from the end of the casket.
Eve clamped a hand over her mouth, blinking a few times in case she was hallucinating.
She wasn’t. Next came the matted nest of blonde hair, the graying face with its vacant, raccoon-rimmed eyes. Lacey wore her burial dress, a flirty, violet frock stained with blotches of decomposition.
“Eve,” Taylor shouted. “You’re having a seizure. I’m
going to reach over and pull out your hand.”
No. She had to do right by the innocent girl she’d wronged, the only way she knew how. I’ve made contact. I need a few more seconds.
The dead girl crawled up Eve’s body with frigid hands, coming to hover on top of her. Decay thickened already oppressive grave air into a solid wall of stench. Spiders crawled in the ragged swatches of remaining hair hanging from Lacy’s head, bald patches as large as saucers gaping on her scalp. The animated corpse stared Eve down with cloudy, death pits of eyes the color of old hamburger.
“You will go to my parents and atone for what you did.” Gray teeth showed when the undead girl spoke. Her heavy, strong breath made Eve’s eyes water until tears slipped down her cheeks. Tears triggered not only by the viscera of the encounter, but by guilt and horror.
Eve nodded.
“Bring your vampire’s lover’s blood. A drop will do.” A green-spotted tongue flicked across purple lips as they twisted into a sneer. Eve shuddered, Lacey’s expression of craven greed more horrifying than her dead face.
Her foggy head spun as she struggled to breathe, but she kept her wits about her. No. Something else. I won’t let you stir Jonnie into this. My book is full of spells. I’m sure there’s one that can bring you back to life.
Lacey snarled, grunting. “My familiar is getting stronger. You know that, right? My pet?”
“Eve. Hurry.” Taylor’s frustration kicked her voice up high.
“You have two choices. Listen to my instructions and bring my parents his toxic blood as your peace offering. Or my pet kills you both.”
Eve lapsed to a hanging state of pre-unconsciousness, hyperventilating. I don’t believe you.
“Now, right now.” Taylor shouted. A force tugged Eve’s wrist. Her awareness jumped between the grave and the riverbank.
The dead girl’s eyes turned to screens and revealed an unspeakable picture. Eve’s parents lay dead in their bed, faces masks of frozen shock as a zombie rodent perched on each of their chests slurped up red curls of smoke. Next flashed a picture of Jonnie, who, from the looks of things, had succumbed to a similar scenario in his New Orleans loft. “Which is it, witch bitch?”
Prove to me you aren’t bluffing. Pulls jerked Eve. Lacey faded in and out as the scene above ground became more prominent in Eve’s perception. Taylor couldn’t break the spell yet, not before Eve figured out a solution.
Corpse eyeballs clicked to white and played a new image. Eve’s father ambled through the living room, balanced on his cane. Relaxed in her favorite recliner, her mother read a newspaper, the current day’s date visible at the top of the page. Behind her, atop the china cabinet, a zombie squirrel watched. It divided into two, then four. “If you return to earth not having made a choice, mommy and daddy die now.”
No. No, no, no.
“A drop won’t hurt your lover. Which is it, witch?”
“Fine,” she gasped out, hacking a cough as toxic odors flooded her system.
“Fine what?” Lacey leaned in close, close enough for the tip of her frozen nose to touch Eve’s. Sharp nails scratched her forearm.
“I’ll visit your parents with an offering of Jonnie’s blood.” God, what an awful, deceitful thing to inflict upon a person she’d pledged to help. But she would not put his life or the lives of her beloved parents at risk. No more death on her watch. If she warned Jonnie, perhaps they could stay one step ahead of this unfolding nightmare.
“He must not know of your harvest.”
What? Why does that matter?
Lacey laughed a sick laugh, lungs glugging like fluid filled them. “Vampire awareness of harvest changes the blood energy and compromises the Pollyannas.”
“Eve, you’re waking up in three, two…”
What the fuck are the Pollyannas?
“The embodiment of indefatigability. You’ll all soon see.”
“One.”
Eve’s consciousness ebbed in her cramped grave, but she clung to a remaining sliver of lucidity.
What are the Pollyannas? Nothing good, of course. But if she could pull but one clue from Lacey, she might have a heads-up on how to keep everyone as safe as possible.
Lacey’s death mask of a face stretched into an obscene grin, highlighting a smattering of florid lesions pockmarking her right cheek. “Optimism made flesh. Tenacity. All vital skills in surviving the impending apocalypse. You have one week to turn over the blood, and after the Pollyannas feed you can tell your vampire whatever you wish.”
“Come back.”
A sensation akin to the ripping of fabric tore through Eve. Above her, Lacey erupted into a cloud of ashes. Eve hacked and spat, swatting soot from her mouth and nose as remnants of dust infiltrated her system in itchy invasions.
She awoke with a start, struggling for air. The familiar creek purred away. Night draped its ebony blanket across the sky. A painful stab of flashlight pierced Eve’s eyes as Taylor leaned in, examining with her forehead bunched.
“Get that away, it hurts.” Eve’s throat burned as she croaked out her words through cotton-mouth. She rubbed a temple, head full of shit and broken glass.
As she reconnected with her conscious mind, Eve gained awareness of a third presence. Invisible, in front of her. Or beside her, or next to her. She moved her head back and forth, glancing over her shoulder. The unseen thing moved along with her.
“Eve.” Taylor drew out the syllable in a protracted stretch of confounded dread.
No point in bullshit at this stage in the game. “I brought something back with me. Her. Lacey. Or whatever she is.” Eve wiggled on her hard rock of a seat, acutely aware of the silent passenger mimicking her motions. Its energy was vexing, an irritant. The feeling of off, that pre-sick malaise that sets in the day before the cold symptoms start.
“She’s–it’s been here. The squirrel. A few of us hauled it away and brought it to you. One of the villagers found it buried in a shallow grave back at your camp and disposed of it.”
If the zombie had, in fact, tracked her and Jonnie here, the odds were that Lacey told the truth about its power. Within, in some preconscious nook, the invader lurked. Sort of sat in a basement corner of Eve’s self like a slumped ragdoll, blinking in a stupefied daze. All around, the jungle chittered and sang its night symphony. The rock was a relentless hardness under her bottom, the truth oppressive in the air.
“I know what I need to do about it. Thank you for everything, but I need to leave. We need to leave.” Eve jumped to her feet.
“Wait.” Taylor stood, reaching out a hand. “Stay the night. You don’t need to rush off or make any rash decisions tonight. We’ll regroup in the morning.”
A lump of shame growing in her throat, Eve shook her head. “Call Carlos. Jonnie can have a private plane in Iquitos in a few hours.”
Taylor stepped closer. “My husband does spiritual work. He might be able to help. You don’t need to go at it alone.”
But that was the thing. She’d always been alone at the end of the day. And now, with some vindictive ghost-girl hitching a ride in her soul, demanding she beg forgiveness for her sins through a scheme involving vampire blood?
With ominous, cryptic knowledge of an impending apocalypse and something called the Pollyannas weighing on her? Fat chance she’d suck anyone else into her dark mess.
“Take me back to the camp, Taylor. Because I’m pretty sure the last thing you need anywhere near you and your loved ones is a necromancer with dubious control over her magic and an angry dead person on her heels.”
Thirteen
Jonnie allowed his gaze to rest on the cardboard box between his black boots as the jet sailed across the Atlantic. He had enough ayahuasca to last him three months, the hippie naturopath had explained, as long as he rationed it carefully. After that he’d need a plan B, but he wasn’t there yet. A few months of symptom-free living awaited him, months during which he could visit with family, make music with his band, and all-around enjoy life.
Besid
e him, Eve stared out the window. All of her talk of marshaling death disconcerted him, to say the least. To say nothing of the wild, vacant look that had overtaken her eyes.
But that didn’t excuse his putting his cock in her mouth and then giving her the cold shoulder.
Jesus, he prided himself on being better than that with all women, especially ones he cared about. Yet he’d reverted to the kind of man-child he saw everywhere in his line of work, selfish and oversexed, treating partners like objects instead of people with feelings.
Shame on you, mate. Perhaps one day, he’d stop bolloxing things up with Eve so he could stop apologizing. Today would not be the day.
He squeezed her knee. “I apologize for how I acted.”
She flinched, then relaxed as she turned to face him. Worry lines he hadn’t noticed before creased her forehead. “Yeah, well, I was pretty off the rails there.”
A twist in his chest hurt his heart. “What happened exactly? In the hut, and with Taylor?”
She tapped the toe of her muddy hiking boot into his box, nudging a loose curl of packing tape. “My powers. They’re changing. It was—is—scary, but I have leads. On the girl, and what we, I mean I can do once we get back.” Emptiness in her voice, that matter-of-fact tone that comes with scrubbing emotion from thought, prompted him to keep his hand on her leg in an offer of assuring touch. He made a silent promise that he wouldn’t balk at her again.
Plus, her correction of “we” to “I” saddened him. He’d grown to appreciate the thought of them as a “we,” however unusual their “we” was. “Tell me how I can help.”
Several beats of silence followed. The plane dipped, making its initial descent. Jonnie’s ear popped and he rubbed it, awkward as a schoolboy having uttered “may I kiss you” as he awaited her response.