“Black in Back” (conclusion)

She was only out for a few seconds. When she came to, dogs were baying in the distance and someone was hauling her arm from its socket. She staggered onto her feet and lashed out, but her fist whistled harmlessly through the night. A breathless, “Tess, it’s me,” took a second to register. She dug in her heels despite the danger.

“Black?”

“Shut up and run. That way.”

She swung wildly in whatever direction and took off at full speed. A thousand panicked thoughts raced with her, including the sharp concern that she had wrenched something when she fell and she was slowing up because of it.

Black urged her from behind. “Keep going.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” He gave her a shove for encouragement. “Keep going!”

She wanted to ask about Grace, but questions and whatever she had wrenched would have to wait. Black herded her through the dark, cutting her left or right when he wasn’t on her heels, and she ran blindly, barely one step ahead of freaking out. She thought of rabbits and foxes and deer bolting through the woods with hunters hot on their trail. If she stopped, the fear would drop her before her pursuers could. So she pushed her pounding heart and straining sinews that little bit further, wondering if the speck of light in her vision was a real light or a sign that she was about to faint. She heard nothing beyond the roar in her ears, but the hunt hadn’t stopped. Why were they bothering to run when Raymond owned the whole damned hill and recruited more psychotics than a terrorist cell? He probably had a helicopter stashed somewhere, its rotors warming as the pilot ran a pre-flight safety check and the snipers loaded their long range weapons. The motorcycles and ATVs would swarm out of nowhere next, converging from all directions—just like the headlights looming in front of her, blazing halogen at eye level. Jesus, what the hell kind of military muscle did Raymond have on retainer?

Tess stopped running. She stopped dead in the supernova glare and waited, sobbing, for the impact.

It didn’t come. The vehicle, whatever it was, veered to one side and braked hard. Tess was still waiting to be hit when the rear door opened and, impossibly, Grace was hollering, “Get in!” through the driver’s window.

Stupidly, Tess blurted, “A Hummer?”

Black nailed her square between the shoulders. She pitched forward, caught herself on the running board, and clambered into the backseat when he shoved her in the butt. “Go!” he shouted, and Grace hit the gas before he was all the way inside. They got some extra momentum from an explosion at their backs; the Hummer bucked and roared and the back window disappeared with a crackling smash, but it kept going.

It kept going until it had careened down the winding driveway and blasted through the gates at the bottom of the hill, leaving twisted metal, a flaming estate, and a furious vampire in its wake.

………

Even for the filthy rich lord of preternatural darkness, intelligent help was hard to find. The goons guarding Grace’s room had been the ones to answer Raymond’s summons, thus leaving their post untended and enabling their charges to escape. Between them, Black and Grace had known enough of the mansion’s layout to make a straightforward getaway. She had run for the garage; he had crossed his fingers and hoped that Tess was being held in Raymond’s suite. He hadn’t expected her to leave through the window, but her impulse had made his job easier. While pondering the quickest climb to the second floor, he had been startled by the crash and seen her catapult through the showering glass like a stunt double for Angelina Jolie.

The action movie reference made the Hummer an appropriate getaway vehicle, though Grace claimed it had been the only one in the garage with keys in the ignition. The explosion, she added, had been helped along by spilled gasoline and the heavy crystal lighter she had grabbed on her way out the door. “Black thought I was nuts to take it, but I’ve been to Raymond’s collectible car museum. He is gonna be so pissed,” she said, cheerfully.

The Hummer barrelled merrily toward the sunrise, past the city limits and heading for open highway.

“Does he have a helicopter?” Tess asked, unable to shake the terror of being pursued.

“Not on the premises. There’s probably a GPS on this thing, though, so we’ll have to ditch it before dark.”

“Why wait until dark? He has daytime thugs.”

“Relax, Tessie. He can’t do anything until the police and fire departments are finished with him.” They had passed squad cars and fire engines racing the other way, lights and sirens screaming in the sleepy pre-dawn silence. Smashing through the gates had barely dented the Hummer’s front end, but the vehicle itself was bound to draw attention, so the looks they got from early morning commuters were mostly disgusted. Grace was happy to flip everyone the finger until Tess told her to quit making them more memorable than they already were for riding in a pimped-up war machine.

She had never seen her sister so giddy. She wanted to throw up and pass out, but she couldn’t stop trembling long enough to do either. By comparison, Grace was almost high.

No, she was high—on adrenaline, on defying death, on the powerful motor vibrating through the steering wheel, on living the adventures of Thelma and Louise with a vampire in the backseat. In short, Grace was crazy.

“What if he owns the cops?”

“Tessie,” Grace reproached, though the more Tess thought about it, the likelier it was.

“Listen, Black told me that Raymond is the godfather of monsters, that the cops couldn’t handle it if the monsters got loose. Doesn’t that suggest the cops know about the monsters, and that some kind of arrangement is in place? Trav’s murder was dismissed so quickly—”

“Will you let Travis go, Tess? He looked like a suicide, so they wrote him up as one. Jesus, girl, you sound crazier than I do. Let me be better than you at one thing, okay?”

“I’m sorry. I’m just scared.”

“Yeah, well, you started it.”

“I did not! You did, by taking him to a party and—”

“Will you two shut up?”

The sisters fell silent. After a minute, Tess said, “We thought you were asleep.”

“Who can sleep with the ugly stepsisters snarking at each other?”

“We’re not step—”

“I said, shut up,” Black repeated, weakly. He sounded more than exhausted; he spoke as if every word took strength he couldn’t spare, but he pushed to get his point across. “Tess is right. There’s an arrangement, but not the way she thinks. Raymond’ll be tied up for a couple of days. We have to disappear before he gets free of the legal red tape. Take us back to the city, Grace. We’ll dump the truck and hide in plain sight until we can get out of town for good.”

“ ‘We’?” Grace echoed, dubiously.

“Yup,” he groused. “Thanks to the ties that bind, now we are three.”

“You’re a vampire,” she reminded him. “Why do you care about us?”

Tess answered for him. “It’s his neck as well as ours. Raymond didn’t starve him for random kicks. He’s never killed a human. Raymond wanted him hungry enough to kill you, Grace. Then he was going to kill me.”

“Yeah, but Black didn’t kill me. He didn’t take a drop.”

“He couldn’t trust himself—could you, Black?”

He said nothing. Tess looked into the backseat. He lay lower than the windows, trying to stay beyond reach of daylight’s creeping fingers. He was worse than pale. He was almost grey, and he looked as if … no, that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be shrivelling. She had never seen him in daylight, was all. She had learned that vampires didn’t change between dawn and dusk; they could even function if they stayed in shadow, but Black looked thinner than he looked at night. His face looked bonier and his fingers curled as if the muscles in his hands were atrophying. Were his eyes closed? She couldn’t tell their lids from the film that covered them until she saw his lashes spread against his cheek. And he was breathing in a tightly measured rhythm that indicated a losing battle of will over instinct.

The Hummer wobbled as Grace took her eyes from the road. “Tessie, what are you doing?”

She had climbed between the front bucket seats. “Take us back to town, sis.”

“Tess, you can drive this thing. Let me do that.”

“Keep driving, Grace.”

“Kid, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

She did. She absolutely did know. It didn’t mean she wasn’t scared, but she had been scared from the beginning and she had gone forward anyway—because of him, because he trusted her. She was a pain in his ass, but he trusted her. It was only fair that she trust him in return.

She squeezed onto the floor behind her empty seat and whispered his name.

THE END

January 9, 2015

Retreat Into Art

Poetry. Cake decorating. Architecture. Painting. Metalwork. Jewelry. Quilting. Photography. Everyone can do something artistic. People say to me, “I could never write a book.” To which I say, “You can do something else.” (And I guarantee it’ll be something that I can’t.)

At coffee with my wee sister one day, I told her about the card I was making for our younger older brother’s birthday. At that stage, I’d not yet decided on a drawing, so I said to her, “If you get an idea, let me know.”

She kinda smirked and replied, “I’m not that creative.”

Wrong-o, kid. I reminded her of her flair for interior design (she has a great eye for colour) and the garden she used to keep in bloom throughout the seasons. She thought for a second, then said, “I liked to plant things to see what they’d look like, or if I could keep them alive.” Which she usually could. She likes to paint walls, too, if she could do so uninterrupted. She has kids and critters and a job, so her creativity goes unrecognized, but it’s there. Every one of my siblings has some creative ability whether or not they realize it, and we all share warmth, wit and wonderful parents. Dad is an artist/writer/dreamer; Mum is a gift unto herself, but was always baking, knitting, or sewing, and loved to play her piano while she raised her kids.

Making time for creativity is the trick. In an über-busy world, too few of us earn a living from our passion. Creativity is notorious for producing poor to no income, but that’s what hobbies are for. The lucky ones make it their reality. The rest of us make it our escape from reality. Either way, how dare anyone claim that art is expendable! Without art, there is no life, no will, no courage, no joy … no point.

Just sayin’.

Year of the Vampire

Back in 1976, my older sister brought home a paperback novel called Interview with the Vampire. A fifteen-year-old Ru read it and it changed her world. Anne Rice’s vampires did what Bram Stoker’s could not—they made the night sexy and romantic and tragic and gorgeous. The story was Louis’, but Lestat stole the show.

Walking through the mall in 1985, I spied a display of hardcovers in the bookshop, each titled The Vampire Lestat. Apparently, the villain in Interview had captured more souls than mine, and while it took Anne Rice a decade to publish the sequel, it was worth the wait. Her writing inspired me to pattern my own style after hers; oft accused of indulging in “purple prose”, she painted scenery and sensation like no one else I’d read. I wanted to paint the pictures in my head with the same robust strokes, employing the same air-brushed hyperbole to burnish the end result. I read each successive volume of The Vampire Chronicles (The Tale of the Body Thief remains my favourite), but hopped off the bandwagon when Ms. Rice veered off to tell stories of ghosts, witches and werewolves. I admit, fascinating as the other creatures of the night may be, vampires top my food chain.

This past year, Ms. Rice returned to the vampire world with Prince Lestat—I am nearly finished devouring my copy (thanks, Ter!), and once again, my imagination has been fired by the beauty in liberating darkness. The ultimate predator, armed with preternatural allure and indomitable will, the vampire does more than inhabit that darkness. He owns it.

Over the past twenty years, I’ve written a slew of my own vampires, each from a wholly different world and possessed of entirely unique and individual personality. Each of my top three exists in his own nocturnal sphere that, like parallel dimensions, operates side by side with, but doesn’t cross over into, the others. I recently had the brilliant idea of bringing them together for a writing exercise, but every one of them wanted to know why he should oblige me.

Except Black, of course. Black flatly refused … which opened the floor to his arch-nemesis, Raymond de Haven, but still, with Julian reluctant and Darius plainly unconvinced, my great idea seems doomed. Unless they have something to say, none of them will cooperate. I guess it’s a sign of pure character development that I can’t make my vamps do my bidding. Apparently I work for them …

… as it should be.

Kindness

How disappointing. February 8 to 14 was Random Acts of Kindness Week and I failed to see it on the calendar before the 19^th. Darn it, I missed an opportunity, perhaps countless opportunities, yea, an entire week’s worth of opportunities, to be kind.

But wait. Is kindness, like Christmas, restricted to a specific date? Maybe it should be sad that a week in February must be dedicated to a trait that is born in every human child. After all, I know lots of kind people. In fact, I know more kind people than unkind ones—and I bet everyone else, does, too.

We are told that the world is a dark and bad and scary place, and sometimes it is, but why is it that we only hear about the dark and bad and scary things? Why do we allow what we hear to colour what we see and what we feel? Why did I, on noticing that I had missed Random Acts of Kindness Week, experience a twinge of the negative by having missed my chance to be who I am by nature?

Geez, Ru. Kindness, like Christmas, can be practiced every day—and it should be. Starting with ourselves. Too few of us treat ourselves with kindness, but isn’t that the best place for us to begin? Like an artist honing his craft by painting self-portraits, the art of kindness can be mastered by starting with the face in the mirror. You don’t need a specific date on which to begin, either. You can start right now.

With love,

Bear Repair

the Surgery Triplets

For a woman who glories in writing blood, sex and violence, I am almost comically squeamish. Paper cuts put me into a coma and, to this day, though I have watched the movie a hundred times and consistently include it among my top ten favourites, I have yet to watch the open heart surgery scene in All That Jazz.

So when one of the bears needs an operation, it’s inevitably Ter to the rescue. My aging brown bear, Rufus, needs more paw surgery. He’s already had one foot and his other hand refurbished, and he’s in good company: Elliot needed stitches after a mysterious football incident tore a seam in his leg (a chronic injury that yet plagues him when it’s convenient), and the Emperor Ming, aka “the Big Fat Panda”, had back surgery a few years ago. Ter is meticulous, compassionate, and not afraid of stuffing. Even the most anxious bears trust her. I, on the other hand, would be a basket case and the patient would react accordingly. Like children with a hysterical mother, my bears are more highly-strung than their cousins; bedtime is a nightly circus because I want them to settle NOW and they must have their cuddles and smooches and drinks of water … *sigh*

But back to Rufie’s surgery. He and I have been in denial for a while, but when one of his inner beads popped from his paw the other night, we both freaked out and the appointment was settled.

Paging “Doc” Ter!

“Black in Back” (Part V)

At least they were kept together. Tess would have worried if Grace had been allowed to wander, though she wondered why she cared when the damage had been done ages ago. Days, weeks, months, or a combination of the three didn’t matter. What really bit was the accusation that she had stolen every one of Grace’s prospects from parental preference to romance and beyond. She hadn’t even known there was a competition. Grace had misbehaved so Tess had behaved; she had been sparing her parents the angst of two hellion daughters … plus, she was naturally disinclined to disobedience. That was why she had broken Daddy’s heart by falling in love with Travis. She hadn’t expected to break her sister’s as well, though she’d apparently been breaking it since grade school. Stealing friends and teachers and husbands; she was a real Mata Hari and hadn’t had a clue.

What a laugh.

She sat by the window as twilight fell. The house stood on the crest of a hill and overlooked acres of manicured lawn. A long paved drive wound up from the main road. Way in the distance, the city skyline made an Etch-a-Sketch silhouette. “Why are there no neighbours?”

“Raymond bought up all the houses then kicked the neighbours out,” Grace told her. “There were too many noise complaints and he got tired of the citations.”

Despite herself, Tess laughed. The sky purpled to match the bruise on her sister’s face and she remembered that there was nothing remotely amusing about the situation. Raymond hadn’t returned, and from the beat of the band tuning up in the mansion’s ballroom, he was unlikely to appear tonight, either. Another mean party was underway, as advertised by the headlights marking the driveway like a string of pearls.

The door opened. Grace stated the obvious. “Dinner’s here.”

It was Italian, tonight. Pasta in parmesan cream and chicken cacciatore. Tess’s throat tightened at the smell of the red sauce. Cacciatore had been Trav’s favourite. Could Raymond have known? She bit her lip and looked at Grace, who had bypassed the main and was already into the tiramisu. “Gracie,” she reproached.

“What? Life is uncertain.”

Under the circumstances, Grace had a point. Tess got a spoon and joined her on the far side of the bowl. She wasn’t really hungry—and hadn’t been since she arrived—but dessert was dessert and if Raymond was fattening her for the oven, she’d make darned sure she was mostly fat before she got there.

“Oh, not for the oven, darling,” he remarked when he finally did show up a day or two—it was hard to track time—later. There was no party tonight. No headlights streaming up the drive, no drumbeat reverberating from the main floor, no languorous hubbub drifting across the lawn. She had watched inebriated couples kissing or worse through her window these past nights. Grace had watched as well, and Tess had wondered if she missed being part of the action. She had wanted to ask crawly questions, but hadn’t dared. The animal hunger in her sister’s eyes had sort of answered them anyway.

“What, then?” she asked Raymond. “You’re feeding us so well for a reason.”

“I’m a gracious host,” he replied with a chilly smile. “Nothing but the best for guests beneath my roof.”

“We’re getting tired of being stuck in this room for days on end,” Grace spoke up.

Raymond looked puzzled, then comprehension dawned in his deep dark eyes and he uttered a dry barking sound that might have been laughter if it had come from someone with a soul. “You think I mean you? Your sister really is the clever one, isn’t she?”

Grace bristled. “I want to see my son.”

“Well, you can’t. He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“What else can I mean, you stupid whore? He’s gone, left the premises, no longer here; is that clear enough for you?”

Grace made an anguished sound, but Tess stopped her from lunging by blocking her with an arm across her chest. “How did he get away?” she asked, quietly.

“He’d served his purpose, so I gave him away. More people care about him than about his mother, I can tell you. Children get more attention when they disappear than they do when they’re safe at home.” He gave Grace a patronizing look. “You’re done, sweetie.”

On cue, as if they’d been listening at the door, four of the usual six goons strode importantly into the room. Grace backed up a step, but they hadn’t come to take her. They’d come to keep her contained while Raymond removed Tess.

………

“I’m continually bemused by the mortal obsession with size,” the vampire said. He punched a button and a big screen plasma TV came to life on one wall. “Eighty inches,” he went on, “as if something this huge would fit in the tombs you creatures call condominiums. Have a seat, twinkie. The show’s about to start.”

Tess looked around. This wasn’t a screening room like she’d heard some mansions had; not a mini-theatre with a digital projector and a wet bar. This was—oh, God—more like Raymond’s private domain, a borderline boudoir kitted out with the latest technology hidden amid the streamlined 30’s decor. “How old are you?” she asked.

“I don’t remember,” he replied—which was probably true. He flipped channels as he talked, pretending to be distracted, but Tess knew better. He was tapped into her rhythm, aware of her breathing and heart rate, assessing how much fear tainted her scent and how much more was required to jack his vampiric jollies to the max.

She doubted that she could be more scared than she already was, not without blacking out anyway, and losing consciousness was not an option. She turned her back on the TV and perched on the edge of an armchair much like the one Grace had occupied in their prison room.

In the room now showing on the TV screen. It took a second before Tess recognized the layout: the bed between the windows, the cigarette-scorched wardrobe and the armchair beside it. Grace wasn’t slouched in that chair now; she was pacing a path in the carpet—and she had been right. Raymond had been watching. From the overhead light fixture, apparently.

“You’re succulent when you’re asleep, did you know that?”

She fought to keep her voice steady. “I had no idea.”

“Such juicy perfection is rare these days. Most of you are toxic with chemicals or cholesterol. Even your children lack flavour; despite being little fat slugs, they’re painfully malnourished. A specimen as delectable as you, lollipop, is to be savoured, almost cherished, in the taking.”

This was not a conversation that Tess wanted to have. It seemed that Raymond intended to kill her himself, and probably within the next few hours. After all, she was the prize in his vendetta against Black—but Black had abandoned her and rescue was unlikely to come in any other form. Raymond would get what thrills he could before he killed, but kill he definitely would. “Did you really let my nephew go?” she asked, to keep from screaming.

“I’m wounded that you would question my integrity.”

Tess repeated the question. Raymond heaved an impatient sigh, rolled his eyes, and tossed the TV remote aside. “I don’t keep anyone beyond their usefulness and slain children get far too much press. I can’t afford that kind of publicity. Adults, on the other hand …” His fingers picked up where his voice trailed off, brushing his nails lightly across her throat. They were smooth and slightly convex, and cold like ice slivers. Tess shivered despite herself and he smiled, bending close to breathe her scent. His silky dark hair fell around her, redolent of musk and incense, and for a disorienting instant, she turned toward him as if answering a lover’s touch.

“You’re not Tess.”

She jerked her attention to the television screen.

“Who are you?” Grace was asking.

“Oh … my … God …” Tess murmured, abruptly sitting. On the screen before her, in the room where she and her sister had been imprisoned, a more dishevelled than usual Black was propped in the doorway, staring slack-jawed at Grace. Someone in the corridor shoved him and he sprawled over the threshold. The door slammed shut. Grace ventured forward when he stayed where he’d landed, circling him so warily that Tess knew she had recognized him as a vampire.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

Black lay still for a long moment before pushing himself to his knees. “Believe me, sweetheart, you don’t want to know.” His voice was weak and vaguely slurred. He sat back on his heels and lifted his head as if it was full of cement. Grace recoiled, but Tess only looked accusingly at Raymond.

“Where are his sunglasses?”

Raymond shrugged.

“He looks awful,” she continued. “What have you done to him?”

“Oh, pooty pie. He’s just hungry.”

“How hungry?”

Raymond shrugged again. “We snared him a few days ago, and since he runs on fumes, I’d guess the lure of Gracie’s blood will fold him in fifteen minutes, tops. Delightful, isn’t it? For once she’ll be preferred over her prissy little sister.”

“I am not prissy,” Tess snapped.

“I may call you on that when the show is over.”

“Why is there a show at all? Do I have to watch Black kill my sister?”

“No, but I do.”

Tess quickly averted her gaze. Jesus, she thought wildly, who knew? A vampire with EDS. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just a pervert, and that sickened her enough to make her wonder who had made him immortal.

Black’s voice sounded edgy through the speakers. “Where is Tess?”

“I don’t know who you mean,” Grace replied.

Raymond snorted and muttered something derogatory. Tess shot him a savage glance, but, unwittingly, Black spoke for him. “Don’t jerk me around, darlin’. You smell just like her. Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Raymond has her. What happened to your eyes?”

“I was born this way.”

“Blind?” Grace thrust three fingers in Black’s face. He smacked her hand aside. “That’d be a ‘no’,” she observed, rubbing absently at her wrist. Give her credit, she was braver than her little sister; she had no compunction about zeroing in for a better look, but Black was in no mood to be inspected. He was on his feet and putting distance between them while Grace was still half-crouched. “How do you know my sister?” she asked.

“How do you know Raymond?” he shot back, scanning the ceiling. Tess stopped breathing when his filmy gaze passed over the camera lens and kept going as if he hadn’t seen it, and maybe he hadn’t. She wasn’t sure until his eyes roved back and hesitated on hers for half a hiccup. “Correct that,” he amended, turning to her sister. “How well do you know Raymond?”

“I know he’s a prick.”

“Not news, sweetheart.”

“How do you know him?” Grace asked.

“He’s my grandfather,” Black said, and Grace choked. Raymond shook his head and lamented the ingratitude of children. Tess considered reproaching him, but there was no point in berating a predator for preying. People either forgot or ignored that vampires were not human; anyone willing to go that route was too dumb to live—and probably wouldn’t.

“You must have disappointed him to end up here,” Grace surmised.

“Yeah, family’s a bitch.” Black hitched up in his pacing of the room and spared her a narrowed glance. “What’s your excuse?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nice girls don’t wind up as the main on Raymond’s all-night buffet.”

“I’m not a nice girl. Tess is.”

“Too bad she’s not any brighter than you are. How the hell did he catch both of you at once?” Tess almost laughed, he sounded so annoyed. Grace, by comparison, got her back up—her usual reaction to accusations of blatant stupidity.

“I suppose you’re here by invitation?”

“He is,” Raymond growled beneath his breath. He was staring intently at the screen. “By dinner invitation, so dig in, Ariel, before she gets cold.”

Tess thought that may have already happened. Grace wouldn’t give up the goods when she was insulted and Black wasn’t going out of his way to charm her. He wasn’t her type, either, unless she proved so starved for a vampire’s attention that she didn’t care whether he was scruffier than a third-rate biker. He truly did look awful. He put his back to Grace and walked the room once, twice, searching for a way out, buying them—buying Tess—a little more time.

“He’s not going to cave,” she told Raymond.

“What do you know about it?” he snapped, still riveted to the TV.

“I know Black. He’s an honourable man.”

Raymond scoffed. “He’s a vampire, twinkie. Better yet, he’s a hungry vampire, and getting hungrier with every beat of your sister’s meaty heart.” He thumped a fist on the TV frame. “Show us some skin, Gracie; you know you want it.”

Tess glanced at the stalemate on the screen, then back to Raymond. “You’re hungrier than he is.”

He snorted.

“Oh, come on,” she persisted, questioning her sanity even as the taunt left her lips. “You don’t kill every night. You couldn’t possibly get away with it, so you have to do what Black does. You sip us like wine, taking a mouthful here and there because, let’s face it, no one empties a whole bottle at once.”

He turned his head, his black eyes bright and malicious. “I’m going to empty you, cookie.”

“Then you’re definitely hungry.” Tess took a deep breath and peeled off her t-shirt.

Raymond straightened with a condescending tut. “No, no, no. That’s not how this is going to play.”

“What, are you going to take me when I’m pink and succulent? You have to get me to sleep first, and I’m telling you now that will not happen. I won’t go down without a fight, so you’d better be up for one. Oh, wait,” she sneered, noting the flicker in his eyes, “you can’t get it up, can you? You have to watch someone else do it first, that’s why you throw all these dope parties. Someone else gets us started, then you step in to finish up. You’re no predator. You’re a parasite!”

Raymond hissed, flashing his fangs in the TV’s blue-white glow. They were beauties, Tess saw with a twisted thrill, but when he launched himself toward her, he blew past and yanked open the door, bellowing names into the corridor.

Shit, what had she done? She fumbled back into her t-shirt and hastily scanned for another exit. Seeing no other door, she made a dash for the drapes in hope of finding a window behind the gauzy sheers. She hit glass, all right, but not hard enough to break it. She drew back to smash her fists through it, felt cold hands close on her wrists, and was spun to find herself cloaked in Raymond’s waist-length hair. He drove her spine against the sill and jerked her hands above her head. His voice ground like dry gears, deep in his throat. “You are so done, bijou. So, so done.”

She couldn’t quell a whimper when he licked up one side of her face. The perfume in his hair was gagworthy in such close quarters; she clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, and tried not to wince as his tongue pulled at her skin. Stupid; I’ve been so stupid—

Raymond took her by one wrist and thrust her backward into the room. He laughed as she bounced off one of his thugs and ricocheted between two more before a fourth managed to stop her momentum. That one brought her feet off the floor and leered at Raymond. “Where to, boss?”

“Must I tell you everything? Get her on the bed, you idiot. Kneel on her if you have to, but don’t break anything.” The vampire stood by as Tess was flung flat and flipped onto her back. “Scream if you like, twinkie. It gets the boys going.”

Tess refused to oblige. She would burst a vessel before she loosed more than an impromptu yip, but she had promised Raymond a fight and the gorilla hands attempting to pin her to the mattress were conveniently clumsy in thwarting her thrashing limbs. She was naturally little and quick. Adrenaline made her a blur. The goons fell over themselves trying to corral her; she bit, she kicked, she bucked and clawed and actually landed a few respectable blows before one foot connected with a scrotal sac and the injured party’s howl soared over Raymond’s outraged shouting. Suddenly free, Tess tumbled off the bed. She landed on feet and hands, performed an awkward somersault, and bounced upright in front of the television screen. What she saw through the camera lens made her laugh out loud.

Raymond paused, then swore violently. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! Go after them, you morons, or I’ll let the dogs have you!”

The talking one protested. “But, boss—”

Raymond roared. “I said, go after them!”

Forgotten, Tess grabbed a brass table lamp and drove it hard at the window. Glass shattered. She crashed through the broken pane, hit, rolled and fell again, this time some way, before she struck solid ground and lay still.

To be continued …

Girl Friday

the view from my table

The problem, if it can be called a problem, with a day off is that my mind races frantically to jam as much pleasurable activity as possible into a finite number of hours. I ask Ter to drop me at the Moka House for tea and a blog entry, then I panic because I should be doing the bi-weekly dusting.

I can do that when I get home, of course, but that cuts into my writing time. And what about the “spa bath” I owe myself? Or baking the applesauce muffins I’ve been craving? And how many episodes of Ashes to Ashes can I manage before the sun breaks through to create a golden photo op in the garden? I want to read, too, being nearly done with Anne Rice’s latest …

It helps that, while I debated bringing the Canon on my morning tea/blog flânerie, Ter told me point-blank to “slow down, you’re trying to do too much.” It helps, too, that they’re playing Ella Fitzgerald at the coffee house; I pause to listen whenever I hear her smooth, buttery voice. And I am reminded of the Zen saying, “Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished.” Still, my “want to do” list is too long, so the next platitude is “pick the most important thing and the rest can wait.” Which is true. The most important thing is a no-brainer: write, write, write. and remember: the weekend lasts for more than one day.

So a reassuring thing happens as I sip my Asian Misto and tap my foot to Ella: I watch traffic speeding through the village and people with their knapsacks and travel mugs pounding along the sidewalk, and I wonder … What’s the rush?

“Black in Back” (Part IV)

Grace was still in her jammies when she answered the door. Tess scolded her. “You should have asked who it was before you opened up.”

“I used the peephole,” Grace replied. Her eyes were brilliant, blazing blue in twin cartouches of smoky kohl. “What in God’s name have you done to your hair?”

“You don’t like the colour?”

“Since when has dishwater been a colour?”

“It looks better in natural light.”

Grace stepped aside. “Come in and prove it.”

The apartment’s layout was typical 1970s and the view faced east, filling the living room with bright morning sun. Tess obligingly moved into the spotlight so Grace could see the full effect of her three dollar dye job. As she turned to face her sister, she scanned the suite for signs of company. Grace had gone some crazy after her divorce and it wasn’t unusual—or hadn’t been—to find her entertaining a guest for breakfast.

“Do you want to look the bedroom?”

Tess flushed but kept her cool. “Just making sure we’re alone.”

“We’re alone. I wouldn’t have answered the phone otherwise.”

“Lucky me.”

“If you say so. What’s going on, kid? You sounded stressed on the phone.”

Now that she was here, she had no idea what to say or where to begin. Grace stood patiently in plaid flannel pants and a purple tank top, tattooed and body-pierced in defiance of the suburban soccer mom standard she had failed at so spectacularly. She looked like someone who would believe in vampires, though Tess knew she didn’t. Hell, she hadn’t believed in them, not really, not until a few weeks ago, and even then it had taken the Four Seasons to make them a fixture in her reality. Maybe she could get away without mentioning them, just keep it simple so fewer questions would be asked.

“I’m leaving town for a while.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going home.”

“I have no home without Trav.”

“The parental units would love to hear that,” Grace remarked, dryly.

Tess knew. Different as the girls were in temperament, they were united in disappointing their staunchly Christian, white bread, conservative parents. Grace had betrayed their ideal of wifely motherhood and Tess had fallen in love with a suicidal musician. “You should have fallen in love with him,” she said, half-joking.

“I did, but he was already in love with you.” Grace smiled sadly. “Did you ever find out what really happened to him? Last I heard, you thought you were on to something.”

“I was wrong. There’s nothing more than the cops already figured out.”

“Aw, sweetie—” Grace swooped in to deliver a sympathetic hug “—I can’t imagine what you must feel like, but he wasn’t unhappy with you. He was unhappy with himself.”

Tess let herself be embraced, halfway grateful for the gesture. The family wasn’t overly affectionate, so Grace’s offer meant more than it would coming from someone who dispensed hugs like candy at Hallowe’en. She pressed her forehead to her big sister’s shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut against imminent tears. Grace’s skin smelled of dance sweat, good grass, and fine Scotch, an odd mix suggesting that the clubs she favoured were higher-end than the majority of their fellows. It was a strangely comforting scent after days spent with Black in that crappy hotel.

Grace pulled away first, not surprisingly. “So now I have to ask, what were you talking about on the phone? Travis was into some funky shit before he died; has it come back to haunt you?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“Are his friends hassling you?”

The niggly knot in her gut suddenly unravelled. “His friends don’t have your phone number.”

Grace started to frown, but Tess remembered how good a liar her sister had been when they were kids. She remembered Grace standing in her living room after Trav’s funeral, offering to pack up his stuff. She had been in the bedroom beforehand, alone because Tess had been unable to face the shower where he had died, and his cell phone … he had kept his cell phone in the nightstand and Tess had never seen it again.

Shit.

She backed up a step.

Grace matched her, reaching out with one hand. “Tessie …”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Tess, listen—”

Her sister’s fingernails were painted black. She felt their tips scrape her sleeve as she turned to run. Grace called her name, called for her to stop, wait, and she opened the door on a thug in a suit standing at the threshold. Not a vampire, not in daylight; maybe he was nobody but Tess couldn’t go on faith when the klaxon in her head was screaming red alert. She spun back to Grace. “What the fuck?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand? You have no idea what you’re messing with, Grace, no idea at all!”

“Yeah, I do,” Grace said as her sister screamed into the damp cloth jammed over her mouth, “I have a better idea than you know, sis.”

The thug had her in a grip that threatened to crack her ribs. Tess kicked out and felt her shoe strike the galley kitchen counter. Gasping for the breath expended in that muffled scream, she sucked back a lungful of antiseptic stench. She tried to struggle, tried to reach her sister, but Grace just watched from vacant eyes as Tess’s muscle turned to rubber, then to lead.

Then, darkness.

………

“About Sean—”

“Shut up.”

“I did what you asked!”

“I didn’t ask; Raymond did, and Raymond doesn’t ‘ask’ for anything. Now shut up.”

Tess tried to move and couldn’t. The dark was moving, though. Quietly, and smelling vaguely of turpentine. A bottle of it had leaked from her paint box last year and the reek was as stubborn as Black. They were in her Nissan, otherwise she guessed she’d have been stuffed in the trunk.

Grace and the goon were up front. He drove; she rode in the passenger seat. Tess tried to move again and managed a wiggle of her fingers. She was bound at wrist and ankle, but not together. Stretching was possible if she wanted them to know she was awake.

She didn’t. She wasn’t sure how long awake would last, she felt so groggy. Had she imagined her nephew’s name? She hoped so. Not imagining it meant something scarier than being tied up and thrown in the back of her own vehicle … but Grace would never have betrayed her unless someone had threatened her son, and that raised too many uncomfortable questions. Questions like, how did Raymond know about Grace? Did Grace know Raymond? And if she did … Tess wouldn’t entertain that one to save her life.

Unfortunate, because her life seemed in dire need of saving.

“Just tell me that he’s okay.”

“Who?”

“Sean, you idiot.”

“Be nice, Gracie, and I won’t tell you that his nickname is ‘Squab’.”

“Motherfucker,” Grace grumbled. “I can’t believe I fell for your manly charms.”

The goon chuckled fondly. He must have reached for something personal, because there was a sharp smack and a muttered obscenity, and Tess could almost feel her sister’s effort against relenting.

Tess felt no such compunction. She dropped with relief back into darkness.

………

She came to in a tastefully designed room from the 1930s. Clean lines, neutral shades, a white coved ceiling. Brass table lamps. A slick marble fireplace, with a cheery fire crackling in the grate. A glossy wood bedroom suite—walnut or oak or who knew what and who cared anyway? Tess struggled from the embrace of down quilts and puffy pillows when she spied her sister sitting in a low-slung armchair near the wardrobe. Gone were the purple plaid jammies, replaced by a beige silk dressing gown. Her hair was wet and combed away from her face. Her eyes were still brilliantly blue, but without the kohl liner, they lacked ferocity. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They have Sean.”

“How do they even know about him?” Tess demanded. She spoke recklessly and didn’t care. “Mike has sole custody; you lost Sean when his father divorced you for screwing, hell, Grace, everybody.”

“Thanks for reminding me, sis.” Grace produced a pack of smokes and pulled one free of its mates. She lit it with a cumbersome crystal knickknack that required she use both hands.

“Now, now, Gracie, you know that’s not allowed.”

Tess immediately wanted to vomit. That voice; that deep, dusky, crunchy-gravelly unforgettable voice, belonged to the one individual she had quit her life to avoid, and here she was, in his house, in her big sister’s presence, about to square off with him.

Without Black.

Grace doused the lighter and stubbed out the cigarette against the wardrobe. “I want to see Sean.”

“I want world peace,” Raymond retorted glibly, “but I don’t see that happening, either. You’re in no position to make demands, sweetie, and until you are, the boy is off limits.” He smiled at Tess, a cold sickle smile that mercifully showed no teeth. “Nice to see you again, bijou.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

“Oh, I am mightily out of sorts, but what can you do? Life would be so much easier if people would just do as they’re told. Are you hungry? I’ve hired a chef to cater specifically to your needs.”

“That’s kind of you,” Tess said, warily. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. You’re my guest. What do you fancy? Pierre is French, but he can cook anything.”

“Like squab?” she asked.

Raymond’s sabre-edged smile tilted higher on one side. He was not at all attractive unless a girl favoured beady eyes, thin lips and a hawkish nose, but there was a reluctant allure in his whip-slim frame and that oddly compelling voice. “I took you for a vegetarian.”

“Then you mistook me.”

“That’s more helpful than I am certain you mean it to be.” His obsidian gaze flicked to Grace, who had stiffened slightly at the mention of Sean’s nickname. “Your sister has some questions for you, Gracie. I’ll leave you to get reacquainted.” He turned without having crossed the threshold, then added over his shoulder, “Ring if you need anything; there’s a bellpull by the bed.”

Tess looked before she could stop herself. When she looked back, the door was closed and Grace was defiantly relighting her cigarette. “He’s a fucking vampire,” she muttered around the butt end, “he’s not going to die from secondhand smoke.”

“He said it’s not allowed.”

“What are you, Tess, the hall monitor? That asshole has my son!”

“How does he even know about your son?” Tess repeated fiercely, “and while we’re at it, how does he know you? What did you do, Grace? What did you do?”

Her sister’s tone was flat. “You know what I did, Tessie. You figured it out at my place, maybe before then, maybe as far back as Trav’s funeral, I don’t know. He was mixed up with this crowd, too. Raymond—he’s a prick, but he throws a mean party and Travis was a relapse waiting to happen. I guess I took advantage of that, but I never meant for him to die. I had no idea that bitch would kill him. If I had, I’d never have brought him here.”

It was all Tess could do to keep her jaw hinged. “You introduced him to Raymond?”

“No,” Grace said slowly, “he introduced me.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Grace shrugged. “You don’t have to believe it for something to be true.”

“You’re a liar, Grace, you’ve always been a liar!”

“And you’ve always been prefect!” Grace shot back, half-rising from her chair with a disfiguring snarl on her face. “Perfect fluffy candy floss girl, so pretty and smart with all the boys on a string. You could have had anyone, but you took the one I wanted just because you could. He wasn’t your type, Tess. He was a drug-addled hopeless case. He was my type, for Christ’s sake!”

Tess shouted at her to shut up, but Grace only cranked up the venom. For the first time in her life, Tess heard how her sister really felt about her, how jealous she was, how spiteful and vindictive, and how she blamed Tess for all that had gone wrong with her marriage—the marriage she had walked into hoping for redemption until Mike had muffed a comment and suddenly Grace had known that he really wanted her sister and wasn’t that always the way? They all wanted Tess—Mom, Dad, teachers and friends and boys in good standing with the Cub Scouts. Grace had had to trawl the dregs and even then, the one remotely promising scrap had preferred her little sister. At the end of her tirade, she changed her tune on one note:

“I’m glad he’s dead because now you don’t have him, either!”

Tess lost her mind. She went screaming at Grace with bared teeth and unsheathed claws. Grace launched herself in kind and the sisters clashed at the foot of the bed, tumbling onto it in a wrestling, writhing tangle of limbs. They fought like teenagers, scratching and shrieking, yanking on hair, tearing at each other’s clothes. Grace was naked under her robe; discovering so gave Tess a second’s horrified pause when she saw the tracks on her older sister’s skin. Tiny bruises and twinned scabs dotted and there—inside her elbows, behind her knees; anywhere a needle could go so, apparently, could a pair of incisors. Holy shit, Grace was a fang banger and the disgust showed on Tess’s face because Grace took exception and tried to smother her with a pillow.

Reinforcements arrived. Six thugs might have been overkill except that four were required to restrain Grace. She fought them as wildly, wrought beyond coherence until the fifth one slugged her and she sagged, whimpering, in an eight-handed grip.

Tess protested. “Hey!”

“You want we should let her kill you?” the sixth one asked. He wagged a reproving finger in Grace’s swelling face. “Raymond don’t want that, Gracie. He wants this one alive.”

Grace spat. “Of course he does! Even the king prick of vampires prefers her over me!”

“That’s not true!” Tess yelled, flinging the pillow at the thug who could talk. He was so surprised that he let it bounce off his barrel chest and stared when it landed at his feet. Idiot. He gave Tess a wounded look, as if she should have been more grateful when in fact she half-wished Grace had succeeded in suffocating her. Better to die by her sister’s rage than whatever means Raymond had in mind, because she seriously doubted she was getting out of this alive no matter what Bachelor Number Six had said. “Let her go,” she told the quartet holding Grace captive in octopus hands.

They exchanged dubious glances.

“Let her go.”

“Tessie, shut up.”

“No, you shut up!” Tess snapped, shaken beyond fear and slam-dunked straight into bravado. “I am not going to fight with you, Grace. If you try to hurt me again, these guys will stop you and you’ve already been hit once. Do you want to save Sean or don’t you?”

Grace sobbed wordlessly, but she nodded.

“Then work with me. Now, let her go, you morons!”

They looked at each other again, penguins waiting for someone else to be the first off the iceberg. Finally, Number Five gave a grunt and Grace was free. She staggered without the support; Tess scrambled off the bed to steady her when the penguins would have let her fall. “Get out!” she hissed at them. It took no effort at all to load her tone with loathing.

Number Five grunted again and the troop left in single file.

Grace began to cry. Tess hesitated to offer comfort—after all, she was the victim here—but when all was said and done, Grace believed she had a case and that made her pretty darned pathetic. So Tess walked her to the bed, sat her down, and embraced her.

………

“We can’t talk here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s watching us.”

That figured.

“I’m sorry, Tess.”

“Shut up, Grace.”

To be continued …