Chapter Ten
The pendant felt as though it was burning a hole in my pocket as I returned to the coven house, bent on retiring for the morning and putting the whole sordid episode with Anthony behind me. Masking my discomfort at smuggling contraband through the front doors with a casual gait, I offered the doorman a cursory nod. Then I continued onward toward the stairs, my pace not skipping a beat.
Wing-tipped shoes took the stairs two at a time while my mind remained fixated on Sabrina, not sensing the redheaded vixen anywhere nearby and yet, feeling unsettled just the same. My meeting with Anthony marking the eve of my fifth immortal birthday, it reminded me how my mistress enjoyed celebrating the anniversary of my awakening. I suppressed a shiver at the notion. In my thoughts, I saw her lying naked on her bed, her brown eyes piercing into mine. Her finger beckoning me to come closer. I feared vexing her away from our yearly tradition, granted, but found myself far more troubled that she would discover the pendant for some peculiar reason.
Shrugging off the premonition, I continued ascending the stairs. The hour was growing late and I needed to rest.
I passed my brethren without making eye contact, but sensed their gazes falling on me; their facial expressions the standard fare I had come to expect after years of debauchery. Cold stares. Distrust latent in the way they regarded me and a slight tinge of fear at knowing with what ease I could end each and every one of them. The corner of my mouth curled upward. I finished my ascent, musing on how much my station had afforded me, aside from an added dose of paranoia and a very small circle of friends.
My accommodations, for instance. No longer slumbering in a neophyte’s closet, I sojourned in a spacious living area normally reserved for older vampires. No, I had no need of Anthony’s reminder to realize how much jealousy flew about me and how many hands itched for the tools to my undoing. Not a one of them dared to cross Sabrina, though, and everybody knew better than to attempt and fail. Others had tried. None had succeeded. They all found themselves visited by the same fate which embraced my latest target.
Still, as I approached the door to my room, the sound of a familiar being milling about inside my room reminded me I yet held favored status with some. I paused to remove my leather gloves and slipped them into my pocket. My fledgling smile blossomed into a full-blown grin. I did not love the woman, this much was certain, but her precence pleased me, nonetheless.
I opened the door. “Rose. Sweet Rose,” I said as I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, blocking out the artifical lighting in the hallway. Darkness wrapped itself around me, broken only by the soft glow of a sparse collection of candles. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Came for a visit prior to lying down for the day?”
The slender figure of a blonde-haired woman stood no more than ten feet away. Rose turned to face me, revealing a low-cut black dress hugging tight to her curves with her hair flowing over her shoulders and spilling onto her breasts. She returned my grin with one of her own and closed the distance between us. “I haven’t seen you for a while, so I thought I would claim the elusive Flynn first,” Rose said as she reached up, touching my sunglasses and sliding them from my face. “Happy birthday, darling.”
“Thank you, my dear,” I said as I blinked a few times, adjusting my eyes to the dim light. Rose set my glasses onto a table beside the entryway while I started into my room, removing my coat as I walked. “I had hoped to be back sooner, but had a few matters to attend to before I could return.”
“As did I.” Rose slithered behind me, taking my coat from my grip and tossing it onto a chair before placing her hands on my shoulders. I felt her fingers run down, along my back, and suppressed a soft groan. “But you were out quite a long time,” she said. “Have you become suicidal on top of being fearless, staying out so close to dawn?”
I laughed. “No, it was that twit Anthony from Matthew’s coven.” I let Rose slip her hands underneath the black, linen suit jacket I wore and felt it slide from my torso before being tossed where my coat landed. “I had to finish my business with that overinflated piece of refuse before I could sate my own needs for the night.”
“So it is done, then?”
Rose’s hands caressed the blades against my body and I closed my eyes in response, as though she was stroking more than steel with those long fingers. “Yes, it is done. Though there is no doubt in my mind that Sabrina shall be upset with me. I had at him twice before completing the act.”
“Living life dangerously? You will need a very convincing tale to escape Sabrina’s wrath.” One of her well-manicured nails taunted with a button.
The corner of my mouth curled upward. “I will tell her I sought a trinket for you,” I said as I turned to face Rose. “Something as beautiful as you, thus giving him an impossible task.”
Rose smiled. Past her parted lips, I saw her fangs lying in slumber. “And now, Flynn flatters me,” she said as she leaned close. Her voice descended to a whisper. “Tell me a story before you seduce me.”
“What type of story?”
“What did you really ask Anthony to retrieve?”
“This is a boring tale with a disappointing ending. He was unable to locate what I requested.”
“Then tell me that he thought he had a chance to escape when you feigned showing him mercy.”
I chuckled at her schoolgirl-like enthusiasm. “Oh, he did. That he did, indeed.” Reaching up with one hand, I brushed her hair away from her chest and allowed my gaze to drift southward. My fingertips ran along her cleveage line while my devilish gaze rose to intersect hers again. Her eyes glinted with evil, her smile just as wicked as mine. “I tore his garish clothing,” I said, “And ran him through his gut while he bled like a stuck pig. Then I sank my blade deep into his chest and watched the wind carry him away.”
She laughed. “Reduced to a pile of dust.”
“Only ash and nothing more.”
Her lips crashed into mine, our bodies pressing together despite the blades I yet wore upon my person. Rose pulled away from the kiss, but her chest continued heaving into mine. “Tell me another story.” The words dripped with lust. “Who did you kill before Anthony?”
Grabbing her head, I pushed her into a kiss and bit her lip as I responded. “Demetrius, again of Matthew’s coven. One of his elders. The stupid bastard tried to ferret information from Robin.”
“Stupid bastard, indeed.” Once more our lips met. “Tell me you made his death slow. Tell me you made him suffer.”
“He suffered good and proper, Pet.” Stripping off my shoulder holster, I tossed my knives out of the way, then grabbed hold of Rose again. “I pinned him against the wall with my katana and then rid him of the curse that was his head.”
“Soon there will be nothing left of Matthew’s coven.”
“Not when I’m through with it.” Our mouths hovered dangerously close. “I shall kill them all, one by one. Their blood shall form a river of crimson underneath my feet and I shall laugh like a madman as they perish. How does that sound, Rose? Does this fantasy please you?”
Rose threw back her head and laughed before jumping into my arms and starting to devour me with kisses. We stumbled to my bedroom and fell onto the bed while she popped the buttons from my shirt and raked her elongated fangs against my bare chest. Enraptured though I was, the fatigue of the hour began to make its presence known and threatened to take me under if I did not hasten our tyrst along. So I rolled on top of Rose and took the reins, exchanging her slow, deliberate pace for one of my own.
I was sound asleep by the time she left, comatose within mere minutes of finishing with Rose. Settled against the bed and lured into the repose of slumber, my mind fell silent, my secret safe within my unconscious body, at least for the time being. The scorn of Sabrina awaited me when I woke, but at the moment, I seemed safe from any being’s wrath.
Or, so I thought anyway.
***
I had been asleep for a few hours when an ancient premonition invaded my dreams.
The first thing I became aware of was a flash of brilliant white light, throwing me into a sterile room, seemingly without walls. The bright illumination surrounding me should have had me writhing and praying for death, but as I opened my eyes, I furrowed my brow at the absense of pain without my dark spectacles to protect me. At once the solution came to me, something impossible and yet, the only explanation I could conjure.
I was dead. One of my enemies slipped in as I slept and plunged a blade through my chest. If I had expired and gone on into the hereafter, however, I could not help but wonder if the paperwork had gotten misappropriated. The waiting room surrounding me could hardly be described as the portal to hell.
“Hello?” I said, turning around only to find the same endless room surrounding me on the other side. My eyebrow arched. “Would anybody care to explain where I am and what the fuck I am doing here?”
“I remember him,” a voice said in response. Belonging to the female persuasion and one too familiar for me to ignore. My skin crawled as she continued speaking somewhere behind me. “But he wasn’t this ‘Flynn’ person back then. I believe his name was Peter Dawes… wasn’t it?”
I sneered. “Miss Davies, it has been a while.” Turning to face Lydia, I scowled at her while her emerald eyes shined defiance back at me. This time, my deceased former lover possessed no sword of which to speak and none of the wounds I inflicted on her bled through the white dress she wore. I found myself facing a woman holding herself with an air of authority, not a murder victim.
“Yes, it has been,” she said. “Four years since the last time we saw each other, to be exact.”
“Indeed,” I said, “And I seem to recall telling you then that your Peter does not live here any longer. Now, have you come to bore me further, or do you have something relevant to say to me at last?”
Lydia held her gaze, even when mine turned sinister. “You went looking for the necklace again.” Moving forward, she strolled as though having all the time in the world. “If Peter doesn’t live there anymore, then why did that dream haunt you so much?”
“Ah… so that was you.” I laughed. “I should have known. Such a memory returning after so many years locked inside a vault.” Knitting my hands together behind my back, I paced around her as if to size her up. “The adulterous wench returns. And she wishes me to recall such trivialities as a necklace, sending me on a quest for her gaudy piece of trash. Now, why is this, Lydia?”
“Who says I was the one who gave you back that memory?”
“These things do not simply happen on their own.”
Lydia smirked. “Are you sure about that?” She perked an eyebrow. “Maybe that meddlesome mortal you think died five years ago is still alive in there somewhere. Have you ever stopped to think about that?”
“No, dearest, I have been too busy entertaining notions of what I might do with this pendant.” I stopped pacing and smiled, baring fangs at Lydia. “Perhaps I might drape it over the necks of the women I seduce right before I murder them. I could use it as a token to lure them to their deaths.”
She scoffed. “I’ll suggest one better, Flynn. Why don’t you just wear it and spite me with it.”
“Splendid. Perhaps I shall.”
Lydia laughed. “I don’t buy the act. The whole persona, it’s nothing but a facade.”
“I can show you what a facade looks like.” Walking closer to her, I raised a hand and touched her chin, pointing her neck toward me. Instead of plunging my fangs into her throat, though, I leaned close and whispered in her ear. “How about the facade of telling somebody that you love them and then whoring yourself like the slut you were? That you pretend not to be with your self-righteous air of pompous bullshit. How is that for a facade, precious?”
“Why does Flynn care about that?”
“Oh, make no mistake about it, I do not give a shit about your mortal infidelity any longer,” I said, pushing her head away. “I have no lack of lovers. I can pick and choose whom I please and have my way with all of them at once if I wish. I am merely exposing your hypocrisy.” Pausing, I waited for her gaze to return to mine. “Now, it is my turn for questions. Why have you visited me again?”
“Because I want to speak to Peter.”
“And what do you wish to say to him?”
“You’re holding back his gifts.” Lydia narrowed her eyes. “And you’re using them as your own.”
I scoffed. “Gifts,” I said. “Here we go with this cloak and dagger bullshit line everybody feeds me without a single person explaining what the devil they mean.”
“Kind of makes you think…” The corner of Lydia’s mouth curled upward. “Doesn’t it.”
The smug look on her face raised my ire at once. I sneered at Lydia. “Fuck you, apparition. And fuck that name you keep evoking. Stuff these bloody gifts of yours while you are at it; if you have answers for me, then I am all ears, but if not, then leave me the fuck alone and never come back.” My voice rose in octave the more insensed I became. “I am sick and tired of being touted as some special creature without being let in on the grand riddle and the last thing I need is another damn voice lending in the chorus!”
My voice echoed throughout the room, a hush falling as the echo dissipated. Lydia held her gaze and for a moment, we seemed fixed at an impasse until she said, “There are more things going on than you can begin to imagine. Things that have been in existence longer than there’s been a vampire named Flynn. All I can tell you is the answers are coming.” Lydia frowned. “I only hope there’s enough of Peter left in there.”
I did not respond. Lydia turned to depart from my presence, but something caused her a moment’s hesitation. She looked back at me. “Just remember, not everything is what it seems to be. If Peter is still there, past the violence and death, he will understand this phrase. ‘The only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision.’” Her eyes fell to the ground. “And I never stopped loving you. You’re the one who stopped loving me.”
Lydia consummated her departure as though carried off by the wind, there one moment and gone the next. I stood in the midst of the white room with nothing but another riddle until the light began to fade and my eyes opened to reveal my slumbering body never left the bed.
I rubbed my eyes while an ache rose to a burn, the darkness of heavy shades not enough to mask that it was indeed daytime and my retinas were none too pleased at being exposed to anything but pitch black. As a gasp of pain escaped my lips, I covered my eyes with my hand and stumbled out of bed, fumbling around and colliding with several pieces of furniture on my way to the entryway. ‘Damn Rose,’ I thought to myself. ‘She left my sunglasses next to the door.’ I tripped and muttered obsenities until finding the table and using my sense of touch to locate where my spectacles had been placed.
A sigh of relief punctuated shoving the dark lenses over my eyes, but from there I was unable to settle into sleep again. So, I showered, dressed, and whittled away some time staring at Lydia’s necklace, wondering why the devil I was entertaining her words as much as I found myself doing. Sight, but lacking vision. I remembered the quote as being one of her oft-recited proverbs, although I had no notion of why Helen Keller’s words were relevent to me. It defied my understanding.
“Mortal nonsense,” I said aloud, wrapping the chain around my fingers and allowing the pendant to dangle toward the palm of my hand. “That is all this amounts to. Utter and complete mortal nonsense.” I shook my head and thrust the offending piece of jewelry into my pants pocket, rising from my chair to find something else to occupy my mind. The shiver of ghosts from the beyond, whispering their idle threats and veiled insight, was the least of my concerns on the fifth anniversary of my death.
I had a coven mother to face, who would undoubtedly discover what I did in her absence.
Sabrina was a force to be reckoned with when vexed at one of her children.
