Justine knew nothing of depths and distances when the water closed over her. She sucked in a deep breath, a mortal reflex, and struggled with all her vampire strength against her bonds. To no avail. Rubicon had chosen well. How many times had he done this? How many vampires languished at the ocean bottom, alive, but trapped forever?
That’s when the real fear took over—fear of being trapped in the frigid water hundreds or thousands of feet down, never to see Teresa or Simone or Harry again. As the light from Night Watch faded, an instinctual fear of the dark gripped her. With the dark, fear of monsters. What might come out of the stygian darkness with teeth to rip her apart or tentacles to crush her?
Time passed. Justine worked through her panic, fear, loss, anger, and acceptance. This led her to determination. The determination that took her from a widow to a commercial real estate agent worth almost a million dollars when she talked Simone into changing her; that led her to Sinakov and the taking of his head; that took her to a small ledge on a big wall hundreds of feet underwater.
Inch by inch she squirmed or rolled or wiggled herself around on her tiny patch of sand. It seemed to be a long ten foot wide, slightly sloped shelf covered with fine sand that had drifted down through the years. It butted up to an irregular, sheer vertical wall. It was too deep for anything to grow there. She didn’t try to explore the outside edge. She had no doubt it only offered more down.
Using her feet, she scooped out a small hollow in the sand next to the wall. Her little undersea nest. She did not want to slip over the edge.
Then she started to explore her bonds. How was the chain wrapped around her body and legs? What could she do with the tie wraps and the line about her wrists? If they were free, she was free.
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In one fluid motion Simone left her chair and knelt in front of Justine. She placed her hand flat on Justine’s chest. “Even when the heart stops beating, the pain does not go away.” She sat back on her heels. “I will do as you request, but you have to consider for one day what you are going to do. What of your job? Money? What will you do if you survive your revenge?”
Simone rose up, went to a small built in bar and poured scotch in a glass. Eyes closed, she swirled it under her nose, then savored a sip.
“It is true that your senses become more acute.” She took another sip of scotch. “Taste, smell, hearing, sight…” She let her hand trail down her body. “…touch. It will be very strange to you.”
“I have thought about it.”
“But that was before you knew it would really be possible. It is different now. Think about it. If you wish to continue, say goodbye to those you will miss. Say goodbye to your life.”
“Simone, my life is already—”
“No, it is not,” Simone dropped onto the edge of her chair. “You are about to die and be reborn immortal. A gift as well as a curse. You may exist for a thousand years, Justine. Take advantage of this most rare opportunity to say your farewells and prepare.” The passion drained from her, replaced by melancholy. “I still dearly wish I had had that chance.”
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From ALL THE SHADOWS OF THE RAINBOW by Inanna Arthen:
She was startled to hear Harry’s voice so close behind her, as she hadn’t been aware of him approaching. She turned, extending her hand, and Harry reached out, grasped her hand, and very rapidly pressed the object he was holding into the base of her thumb. It wasn’t a pencil; it was some kind of sticker device, like the ones used to draw blood samples. There was a little pop and a sharp pain. Diana reeled back, utterly shocked. She felt a rush of sensation up her arm. Harry’s face was absolutely impassive, as if he was simply watching to see what happened next. Then Diana dematerialized.
She didn’t know why she did it, aside from momentary blind panic. Her hand hurt and whatever the drug was made a tingling sensation but this was nowhere near threatening enough to trigger an involuntary dematerialization. She was trapped between the wall, Harry, the desk and an armchair, she was startled and confused, and she just did it. Now, watching Harry’s face turn more fish-like than ever with gulping open mouth and wide eyes, she knew she had to take another action she hadn’t planned on. She solidified, dropping an inch to the floor as Harry jumped back with a hoarse shout.
“What was that? What was on that needle? What did you give me?”
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“I think you should. Because one thing’s for sure, it’s still hitting you like a ton of bricks. You can either talk about it, or you can drink yourself to death, but it’s going to be one or the other, the way you’re going.” Her voice softened. “Come on, hon. Don’t you know yet you can trust me? Whatever you tell me, goes with me to my grave. And you’ve already told me plenty.” Moira watched as Diana’s hands slowly fell to her lap, but her head remained bowed. “Don’t make me read it in a note.”
Diana looked up sharply. “I’m not suicidal, Moira.”
“Yeah? You couldn’t prove it by me. Sure, maybe you haven’t slit your wrists or anything, but I wouldn’t leave you alone with a bottle of pills. There’s more than one kind of suicide. How do you think my uncle went?”
“The Freemason?” Moira nodded solemnly, and Diana’s shoulders sagged.
“The death certificate said cirrhosis, but we all knew.”
Diana looked away, both chilled and frustrated that Moira didn’t understand. “That’s not the way it is, Moira, it’s—I just feel…horrible. All…wrong inside. Like a skein of wool that’s been played with by a cat, it feels like a mass of tangles, all snarled and knotted, nothing where it should be. Nothing feels right, nothing tastes right…”
“Should you see a doctor?”
“It’s not medical, Moira, it’s something else entirely. Gods…I want to tell you, I swear. I want to tell someone, so much. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Moira pursed her lips thoughtfully and reached for the pack of cigarettes on the table. “Well, I can think of one place,” she said, almost idly, as she struck a wooden match and braced her elbows on the tabletop to light the cigarette. When she finally succeeded, she blew out a gust of smoke and leaned back in her chair. “Why don’t you start by telling me about the vampires.”
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Evan then examined everyone’s wounds. We vampires, of course, needed nothing more than blood to restore us. I could already feel my injuries healing under the influence of the blood I had drunk. So Jean, Alexander and I disposed of the bodies by tossing them into the inferno that was now the White Lion, while Evan tended the others. He stitched whatever needed stitching, and soon the Druids joined us in watching the inn burn to the ground.
“This should not be the end of it,” Michael said. We all looked at him. “We worked well together. Perhaps everyone was so afraid of vampires joining with magic users simply because it had never been tried. Our powers and abilities complement each other. There is much evil in this world. We’ve proven that by working together, we can defeat it.”
“I agree, this shouldn’t end here,” I said. “What do you suggest?”
“A covenant,” the Archdruid said. He leaned on the stick that Evan had cut for him. “That we set darkness against darkness—vampire and Nameless and Druid against whatever is out there that abuses power and makes the night a thing to fear.”
“A brotherhood, of darkness,” I said.
“That’s it, exactly. The Brotherhood of Darkness. We should remain together, or at least in communication, so that whenever the need arises, we can join once more to fight.”
I could see nods of agreement, although Alexander looked dubious. Even Jean was rubbing his chin, which I knew meant he was at least considering the idea.
A Brotherhood of Darkness, banded together to save the world from those like my own bloodmaster. I silently savoured the irony. This could be a new purpose for me, something that would take me out of my grief and let me go forward, as my friends urged me to do. Between this covenant and my responsibility to see that Alexander became a decent vampire who obeyed the simple rules that made our lives bearable, I could move on. “I think it’s a splendid idea.” I clasped Michael’s hand.
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She was an extremely petite brunette woman with an hourglass figure defined by the lean muscularity of a gymnast or platform diver. She wore black and gray denim camouflage pants tucked into black lace-up biker boots, and purple lipstick on her bow-shaped lips. Very “hard rock,” avoiding looking at all trendy, and yet there was something unattractively unapproachable about her, something a little dangerous.
Her name was January Ulrich and she had just turned ninety years old three weeks ago. She hadn’t celebrated her birthday with anyone other than her cat, a one-eyed, twenty-five pound, black short-hair tomcat she had named Griswald. An outlaw and a social reject, most of her friends were either dead or on the run. January’s few surviving family and relations had gone to her funeral eleven years ago, thinking she was dead. Biologically, she was dead. But they wouldn’t have understood that. It was best the way it had turned out. They didn’t need to know what had really happened to her.
They didn’t need to know that people mostly referred to her now as “Cold Janey.”
Once upon a very dark time, January Madison Ulrich had been inducted into the secret sisterhood of Bloodwitches, the oracles and shamans of Moon-Chosen society. She had surrendered her humanity and tethered her biology to the arcane technology, mutagenic treatments through chemicals and cellular implantation, of wampirii alchemical science. Too late, she had learned her mistake. Too late she had learned what murderous things she was expected to be a party to as a Bloodwitch. And too late, she’d learned that Magick, actual Reality-altering, physics-defying sorcery, demanded an awful price from its practitioners.
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“So what do you want to ask of me?” she said after a long and quiet moment.
It was Ashton Brazil who ventured to break the stillness. “Do you know anything about a woman named Calianne? Or a human named Sherilynn Amanda Greyville? Or a professor named Rajan Seddig Al’Meffistah?”
“Or who would dare to be using enslaved revenants, Hounds, to do their bidding?” Quinn added.
Abruptly all of them, even Quinn, jumped as Babael erupted into raucous, mean-spirited laughter. It was a sound not unlike that of a hyena’s coughing titter mixed with the sound of rough steel spikes running across slate. As quickly as it had begun, the laughter faded, descending again into the Kymeric’s usual deep, rapid wheezing.
Madame Wintyrr, too, was chortling in very unladylike, uncharitable fashion. Her sunken eye sockets were stretched wide and she pointed at the tall Olympian with a taloned finger as she spoke. The airborne eyes circled her in a dizzying, almost playful display of gravity-defying levitation.
“Are you quite serious? Hounds? Calianne, Sherilynn Greyville, Rajan Al’Meffistah? Such exotic names! You ask me? Why, you dear, dear fools, you do say the funniest things! For goodness sakes, Quinn, why don’t you go ask your so-called sister—she’d know!”
That was when the audience ended.
Sam Carstairs allowed his hand to slowly wander towards the stock of his holstered Armpistol, his eyes narrowed as he sized up the odds. “Is that it?” he demanded of Quinn. “Is that all? We came here for this?”
“Leave it be,” Quinn advised solemnly. “We have what we need.”
“Do we now? Well, I don’t know about you, but I have some more goddamn questions!” the private detective said.
“If you force me to carry you out of here, cowboy, you won’t be breathing,” Quinn said with grim certitude.
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The man snorted. “No, no. You’re Hedy Duchene and you are looking for someone to help you get to Rubicon. Tell us who you’re meeting and you live. Don’t and you die.”
“Fuck off.” Hedy thought she was doing a good job of playing it cool, but she didn’t want to die. Not right then, anyway.
The woman, who had a surprisingly strong grip on her upper arm, said, “She’s not smart enough to talk. Let’s finish this.”
“Perhaps a closer view of the trees will convince her.”
They dragged her to the door.
“What about him?” Hedy jerked her head toward Eyes.
The woman said, “Oh, he attacked you, you know how men are, and we had to push him out.”
The man slid open the door.
“So you’re going to push me out to kill me, right?”
“Unless you tell us what we want.”
“So, self-defense,” she muttered. A moment later, “Oh my God!” Suddenly weak-kneed Hedy bent forward, twisting to her left, forcing the woman on the right to step close to the edge. Out of sight of the assassins Hedy reached into her purse for her gun. “Oh, I’m better now.”
She straightened up with a jerk while swinging her arm behind the woman. It was an awkward angle for her, but the woman got the idea when Hedy pressed the gun against her back. “Can you fly, bitch?”
“Arrêtez. Suffisant!” Eyes shouted.
“No, not enough.” Catching the assassin by surprise with a full swipe of her hip, Hedy bumped the woman to the edge of the door and kicked her out.
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A barrage of gunfire came from the other side of the motel. She heard the familiar sound of their SUV at full get-the-hell-out-of-there throttle. A burst of black smoke rose from the other vehicles.
“No points for anyone, Monsieur.” Simone shot him in the head.
She paused for a long moment, staring at the body. How many mortals had died because of her? How many vampires had she ended permanently? Looking down at the lifeless man she thought how tired she was of killing, of struggling to survive. Their cause was good, but afterward…a quiet home somewhere, with Fin? No struggles, no enemies, a quiet, boring immortality.
A gunshot a few feet away yanked her out of her vision of an unlikely future. She spun around, dropping to a crouch, aiming at Teresa, who was frozen in place, .45 in both hands, watching a second vampire shudder and die.
Simone dropped her gun. “What happened to keeping quiet?”
Teresa lowered her weapon and let it hang at her side. “The same thing that was going to happen to you in about two seconds.” She gently gripped Simone’s arm. “You were just staring at that guy. You looked…sad. Did you know him?”
Simone laid her hand on Teresa’s. “Non. C’est bon, mon amie.”
Horn blowing, engine roaring, tires spitting out a trail of mud, grass and leaves, their SUV raced away from the motel toward them.
“Our ride is here,” Teresa said.
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Her kidnappers knew what they were doing. Her bonds were of heavy braided line with no stretch. A woman and one male vamp rode in back so she and Simone had no chance to help one another. The body of the vamp she’d taken out lay between them. They were helpless and knew it.
Where was Teresa? Did they get her? Justine didn’t think so. They’d asked where she was. Teresa would have been a bonus.
When the shooting started, Justine had no idea who it might be. For a moment she thought it might be Harry. Despite the gag, she smiled for a second, thinking of Harry riding in guns blazing to rescue the damsels in distress. But he was in California being a good cop. Though she was supposedly immortal, she did wonder if she’d ever see him again.
Her thoughts on the shooter changed when the vamp in the passenger seat said, “What’s that bitch doing,” just before half his head spattered the roof.
After they jolted to a stop Justine and Simone ended up face to face. “Tee,” Justine said behind the gag. Simone nodded. Her eyes smiled.
While they, and the kidnappers, followed the action, Simone managed to squirm around behind the woman. When she started cussing and shooting after the shotgun blast, Simone wound herself up then uncoiled like a spring let loose and kicked the woman out to roll down a small slope.
Christ, was that Teresa coming out of the dark like a B-movie avenger? When the bullet hit inches from her head, she barely flinched. They watched as she impassively dispatched the two vampires. What had happened to the sweet, tough woman who’d vowed to help her, but not kill for her?
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