The Bend-Bite-Shift Box Set Page 31

  The Women smiled, all of them but the one with white hair, Geimhreadh. Even while Devan was growing up as the daughter of a member of the Org, the Women protected her by spelling the magical Org members so they couldn’t detect her extraordinary powers. If not for the Women, Devan might have become a supplicant too.

  “She isn’t here yet,” Geimhreadh finally spoke and when she did her voice sounded like icicles breaking.

  Fómhar spoke. “Geimhreadh means Winter. Samhradh is Summer, Earrach Spring and I am Autumn.”

  Jill nodded, making a little noise in her throat like a sigh. “I get it. They represent the seasons.”

  “No, we are the seasons, my dear,” Samhadh said. “Here, it is, what is. We are Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring and we are the givers of all that exists in those planes.”

  “Like goddesses.”

  This broke Geimhreadh’s stony expression and she smiled proudly.

  “We are not goddesses,” Samhadh said, glancing chidingly at her white-haired sister. “We are the keepers of all that is here and once we were keepers of those things in your realm as well. But then, as happens so often, there was conflict between our worlds and the witches and faeries quarreled. And then the vampires began to prey on both of our peoples and chaos reigned.”

  Fómhar raised her hand and all eyes turned to her. “That was many thousands of years ago. A truce brought peace to our worlds, but the price of that peace was that we would forever be divided and none would cross from their realm to the other.”

  “So if you rule the faery world, then who rules my world?” asked Jill.

  Earrach giggled again and smiled. “We do not rule in the sense that you mean. But in your world The Company maintains order by allowing all creatures the opportunity to co-exist. They’ve policed your magical world successfully all of this time.”

  “I hear a but,” Devan surmised, her left eye twitching in consternation.

  “The Company has run astray. We are not certain by what means, but we believe there is an imposter in their ranks. They’re intentions have lost integrity and value.”

  “The Org and the children. They refused to save the children,” Devan surmised.

  Samhradh smiled and nodded. “At the ‘Time of Choosing’ all magical creatures, witches, faeries and even vampires were given a period of time in which to choose a side before the gates were spelled. Most vampires remained in your world. This wasn’t the place for vampires. Here, it is, what is and therefore their true selves were easily betrayed. Some remained and they still exist; some like you, Jill.”

  “But I’m not magical. I’m cold and undead, but I’m not magical.”

  Geimhreadh spoke. “Cold is not wrong and you are most certainly magical. Your change was a process of magic and you also have the reverie.”

  “But I didn’t think it was–magic.”

  “So often the beauty lying within is just waiting for the spark to spring it forth,” Earrach soothed.

  “Oh, no, but she’s come through the gate now. Has she lost something? Has she lost her gift?” Devan blanched and reached a hand toward the Women, begging to know she hadn’t made a mistake, “I just presumed that there wasn’t any danger when I brought her through.”

  “You will bridge the worlds.”

  All eyes turned to the new voice and Jill gasped when she saw another woman approaching from the clouds above. She floated toward them, her gown shimmering blue like a turquoise pool of water.

  Geimhreadh sniffed and turned away. “And so she arrives.”

  Earrach laughed, “Our eldest sister, Báisteach.”

  Báisteach was apparently not bound by any borders as were the other four. She touched ground and then stepped toward Jill. She smiled warmly but tears trickled down her face.

  “Why’re you crying?” Jill asked, abashed.

  Samhradh piped in again, “Báisteach is our center, the one who gives us the means to provide all that is needed in this world. The most vital resource for life is water; hence, she cries, always and forever.”

  “Wow.”

  “As my sister was saying, after the Time of Choosing we created an unbreakable charm that would strip the powers from any creature that crossed over, thereby protecting the sanctity of each world. But you will bridge the worlds, Devan. You will reunite us all–for better or for worse.”

  As Báisteach spoke the other sisters all dropped their eyes and gave a collective sigh of resignation. Whatever the news or decisions the eldest sister intended to share it appeared her siblings were not of the same mind. It was very clear that they were either unwilling or unable to stop her.

  “So anyone can cross unharmed, with my help. But why? It seems that will unhinge everything you all have worked to protect.”

  Jill could see the distress in her friend’s expression. She could understand her distress well. The Women were placing a huge weight upon her shoulders.

  Báisteach smiled again and her tears increased. “Devan, yours is a destiny that was chosen a very long time ago. Worry not. We, The Women, have always been here to care for you and that will not change. We have much to discuss, but that can wait. For now, we must deal with Jill.”

  Jill swallowed before she stepped closer to the crying deity. “What did I do? Why do you have to ‘deal’ with me?”

  She cringed in surprise when Báisteach laughed aloud. “You have earned a wish, Jill Prescott.”

  With those words spoken Jill felt a movement at her breast. She looked down just in time to see the crystalline beads vibrate before a tiny glimmering insect flew from the center of each one.

  The Past – Anguish of Existence

  The nights were almost always the same. Doc followed Jill to the closest towns of Rosemary, Walton, or Morgan City. She found her hosts in bars, clubs, sometimes even just walking the streets. She took care with her feedings, never again even approaching the point of draining anyone. Of course she did not need to feed each night, but it wasn’t unusual in the beginning for a vampire to want to gorge constantly.

  He forced himself to watch as she came on to the men, touching and throwing herself at them until she could get them alone and use the reverie. After trapping them in a blissful state of paralysis she drank them, healed them and discarded them one-by-one. Each time, Doc felt a little of the good in him get sucked closer and closer to the black hole of his dark-side. He didn’t know how much longer he could stand it. There was nothing he could do to convince her to fight the black soul eating away at her.

  She was bold tonight, taking her “meal” on a park bench. The man of choice was young, possibly not more than eighteen. She’d plied him with liquor–liquor she’d stolen from a convenience store using her powers of hypnosis to distract the clerk.

  Doc could feel hunger eat away at him as he watched her indulge in the hot, fresh blood and he wondered which he was more jealous of: the men touching and sometimes making love to his Jill or Jill herself for tasting the fresh blood he continued to deny himself.

  “I know you’re there, Doc. You might as well come out of the shadows.”

  He wondered when her voice turned so low, ugly and coarse?

  His steps were careful and slow as he emerged from his hiding place and approached her. She kept her head down as she crept off the boy’s lap. When she reached Doc she’d pressed her lips to his and by then it was too late to remedy his mistake. Fresh blood coated her mouth and once he had that warm mixture on his tongue he nearly lost all control. Need clawed at his insides, wringing within his chest in painful twists and turns.

  “Jill, for God’s sake, what are you doing to me?”

  The desperate sound of his voice gave her pause. She stumbled back just a step, “Doc, we can do this together. You know you want to taste it again.”

  “Why? Why are you doing this?”

  “Because I don’t want to be alone.” She gasped and brought her fingertips to her lips, surprised that she had let that slip and wondering where the thought came from.<
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  Doc realized he was talking to his Jill now, the Jill before the change. She dropped her hand from her mouth and reached out to him. He took her fingers slowly, afraid at any moment the nasty side of her would re-emerge.

  “What do you mean you don’t want to be alone, Jill? You aren’t alone. I’ll never leave you, Jill. I promise.”

  “I am alone. This thing inside me is all there is left and yet, unless you’ll do this with me–I don’t know how to fight it and I don’t want to, Doc. I don’t want to. You made me this but you look at me like I’m a freak. You won’t give in will you? So now what the hell am I supposed to do?” She waited for him to answer, but no words would come. He just looked at her, the was pain evident in his eyes.

  “Please just take me home now, Doc. Take me home.”

  * * *

  When Jill awoke the next evening she found a note on the nightstand. She recognized Doc’s large and distinct script; before the change she’d been through his papers, organizing and structuring things for his projects and experiments. Her hand trembled as she reached out toward the folded paper. When it touched her fingers she crumbled it in the palm of her hand and cried into the pillow a moment.

  The blackness in her wasn’t gone, just different today. It was filled with despair, hopelessness and angst. It made her want to disappear; to leave and never come back to this world in which she was living. She wasn’t hungry. No, in fact she felt ill and bloated. Those very feelings had been getting stronger each day after insisted nightly feedings. Doc had tried to warn her that she was taking too often, but she couldn’t seem to stop the drive to find new hosts. Jill was enjoying the “chase” almost as much as the taste of blood.

  Finally she forced herself to sit up, open her hand, and let the crumpled piece of paper tumble into her lap. She unwrapped it one fold at a time, then paused a moment to run her fingers across her name written at the top.

  My Jill–You are not alone but I don’t know how to reach you and convince you of that. So I’ll make a deal with you. If you will come with me tonight, without question and without argument, I will make one last effort to show you that there is a reason to fight this black “thing” as you call it. If you come and if afterwards you find that nothing changes, then we will give in together. We can become the creatures of the dark and the night together and I will promise to be with you no matter what.

  Yours, Allen

  Part of her didn’t want to trust him. She didn’t want to find a reason to fight the darkness. That part of her had started to feel good in a decadent way that made her crave it more and more. She recognized it for what it was becoming: an addiction. Even so, the thought of no longer giving in to those wants and desires terrified her.

  But another part of her missed Doc. She missed their companionship, their camaraderie and most of all their love. Those things had been missing since the change. Could they exist as a couple now? It should make it easier, but in her mind she wondered if they would be like two druggies, one forever bringing the other back down in a vicious cycle.

  “Good evening,” Doc spoke from her doorway. She’d heard him enter, but her mind had blocked it as she’d continued in her thoughts.

  “Hey there. I know I’m not supposed to ask questions, but can I at least know when we’re leaving?”

  He smiled at her, a worried smile on the most attractive face she’d ever seen. She missed him so much and yet something blocked her from giving in. What if he denied her now? She could see that he looked at her in a different way since the change.

  Jill’s eyes were lackluster and seeing the light so diminished hurt Doc to his soul. But at the same time he was pained by it, he also knew what this meant. She’d reached a new stage in her transformation. And if he had any chance to reach her it would be now, when she had become vulnerable.

  “We should go now if we have any chance of getting back before daylight.” He spoke in a casual tone, trying to diffuse the nervousness he could see welling up within her.

  ***

  Doc saw Charlie watching from the window as they pulled out of the parking lot. The grizzly-faced man nodded his head to his friend, a means of conveying his caring and his confidence in him. It bolstered Doc and he took a deep breath as he felt the wheels of the Jeep transition from rough gravel to smooth asphalt.

  It was all Jill could do to sit still on the drive. Her body felt like it was quivering from the inside and soon she began to shiver. This was the first night she hadn’t gone on a feeding spree. She missed the drink; she missed the excitement of the wrongs she was committing. The black part of her soul was crying out for her to listen.

  “Are we sure about this? I think I’d just rather go home. Or I’ll leave, Doc. I don’t want to keep my part of the deal. Just take me back and I’ll go off somewhere on my own. You won’t have to worry about me.”

  He ignored her completely. He knew she’d reach this point. He knew the part of her that was vying for her soul would begin making her weaker and weaker. Next, she’d lash out at him. her fear and longing would turn to anger. He forced his foot harder onto the gas pedal.

  “Stop now, Doc. I fucking mean it. I’m not going to do this. If you don’t stop this Jeep right now I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you, Doc.”

  Her claws scratched his cheek and he ignored the pain. The wounds closed and he reached a hand out and clasped her wrist tightly. He was much older than her and therefore much stronger. He squeezed just enough to let her know it. She stilled for a moment then tried to pull her hand away. He released her, but only long enough that he could curve his arm and put his fingers around her throat.

  “This is no longer a bargain, Jill,” he said with a low, hard voice. “Now sit still and shut up.”

  He felt her swallow under his hand and when he was sure he had her attention, he let go of her neck.

  It was about an hour later that realization seeped in and when it did Jill flung both of her arms out and grabbed the door with one and Doc with the other. She turned to him with pleading eyes. “Please, Doc. Don’t do this to me. I can’t do this. I can’t let them know.”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll know nothing. I only want you to see them.”

  When they pulled into the parking lot of an apartment building Jill’s entire body began to shake. They probably wouldn’t be here anyway, she told herself. Her mother never stayed in one place more than a few months and it had been at least nine since she’d been here to visit her sisters.

  The hope that they weren’t here was dashed when she recognized her mom’s old blue Chevy Monte Carlo. Doc pulled right up into an empty parking space next to it. Even after he turned off the engine she continued to hear a roaring in her ears.

  “Your mother isn’t home. She works evenings just down the street. To save gas she walks there and leaves the car with your sisters, just in case.”

  “Tee’s too young to drive.”

  He smiled, unable to keep himself from reaching out and touching her cheek. “You know your mother better than anyone. She got your sister a hardship license.”

  Jill nodded with an ugly look on her face, “She would do that. Not for Tee or Abby, but so that she could use Tee to run errands for her. How do you know all this?”

  He smiled, “Let’s go. The girls are probably sleeping. It’s what?” He glanced at his watch. “It’s past midnight.”

  Doc found the key to the apartment inside a hide-away stone resting near a potted plant. It was just like her mother to stow a key somewhere just in case she lost or misplaced her own; Doc had done his homework.

  He unlocked and opened the door to the apartment and they stepped inside. They found the girls in the living room instead of their beds. Abby was curled up in an easy chair with just her little brunette head peeking out of the blankets. Waves of long blonde hair fanned out behind Tina on the couch where she was strung out long and straight, her pink-painted toenails glistening in the glow of the television.

  “Wow, Tee’s gotten so tall
.” Jill mused, admiring the loveliness of her little sister. “I bet she drives the boys crazy and loves every minute of it. Oh, Abby’s got glasses now,” she remarked, pointing to the little pink spectacles lying on the arm of the chair beside her baby sister.

  “We can’t stay long. We have to get back before day break, Jill. And you aren’t ready to be with them yet.”

  Her lavender eyes squinted into a frown as she turned to him. “I don’t understand what you mean?”

  He took a few steps toward her and clasped her jaw tenderly, then rubbed his finger along her upper lip. She felt what he meant. Her incisors were extended and she sucked in a breath as she willed them to retreat.

  “I didn’t have any siblings, Jill. But I had a cousin and we were very close. I had forced the reverie on him and the fed from him. The very next day was the day I gave up on being a true vampire. I was horrified by what I’d done, but at the time it was an uncontrollable urge. I didn’t ever want to give in to that again. I refused to see him again until I had learned to resist it. Until I’d learned to deny the urge for feeding from people. You have a decision to make, Jill. Either we both give in to being vampires or we go home and you let me help you fight the darkness. Which is it Jill, because I am with you either way.”

  She swallowed hard, as she stared into his blue eyes. He had a way of pleading to her with just a look–a stare and she knew it wasn’t the reverie because he’d told her it didn’t work between vampires. But she felt him just the same; she felt the emotion raw and desperate in his expression. Terror from the dark-place inside her latched onto her as she reached forward and latched onto him.

  She had made her decision and hoped for Doc’s sake she’d be strong enough to live up to it.

  The Present – An Unwanted Wish

  Jill watched in awe as the little tiny “bugs” that came out of her necklace twirled and fluttered around her in a synchronized dance of sort. As she studied them further she realized they weren’t really insects at all but were tiny winged people.