When Skies are Gray, Part 1 – Love at First Sight : (2009) Candle in the Window

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

A hangover with sharp claws dug into Crow’s brain with a force designed to separate it from his spine.

“Dove!” he yelled lurching to his feet.  His eyes flew open.  He clawed for the Jade Gun but his hand came up empty.  Where was she??  Where was his gun?

“Hey handsome.” Olive smiled at him as she threw her head back after wrapping her hair in a fluffy white towel.

Crow’s surroundings came into focus through the red haze of his blood-high leftovers.  Olive had changed.  A clean turquoise tank clung to her still damp skin.  She jerked the tag off the back pocket of a new pair of  jeans.  Crow winced at the sight of bandages on her neck and wrist.  The wrist being bigger.  Fresh blood stained the white gauze.  Like an alcoholic, Crow both wanted and hated the blood, needed and despised it.  The claws pounding on his head dug deeper.  He held his head in his hands, and dropped back down on the bed covered with dirt and dried blood.  He held back a groan.

“Are you okay?”

Beautiful ivy tattoos running up two arms came into view.  Images of Olive’s life carved on flower petals poked up through the vines.  She ran a hand through his hair.  The headache lessened, but the his teeth elongated.  Olive winced.  Crow took her hand.  He pressed his lips over his teeth.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Olive said.  She gently adjusted her bandaged wrist in his hand.

“I hurt you, didn’t I?”  Crow released her hand shocked at the size of the bandage around her wrist.

“It was kinda a do or die situation.  Don’t worry about it.  I’m a strong southern girl.”

“We’re up North.”

“I know we are, but I’m not from here.  I grew up in the south.”

The bandage wrist haunted him.  It taunted him.  It proclaimed he was willing to hurt anyone to satisfy the need for blood, even Olive.

“You listen to me,” Olive suddenly said.  “You listen up right now, mister.  You did what you had to do.  If you hadn’t drunk my blood again, Dove would have kidnapped and or killed us all.   Don’t you feel guilty for one moment.”

“Do you have mind reading abilities?”

She flashed him a huge smile.  “No.  But you’re kinda easy to read.”

“Bad poker face, huh?”

“Something like that.”

The claws dug back in.  Crow moaned convinced his head might have just split open.

“Crow?” Olive put her arm around his shoulders.

“I’m all right,” he muttered through his fingers.  His headache plateaued into a moment of peace.  The world settled in around him filled with Olive’s sweet scent.  To taste that sweetness….Crow shut down the surge of vampire desire so fast he almost threw up.

“How long have we been here?”  He tried to be a man.  He had to be a man.

“A few hours.  Stan dropped us off and left to pick up some clothes and stuff.  Aunt Rose and I have showered. Stan’s in this one, but the other one is free if you want.  Zephyr used the sink.  Umm….” Olive looked around the room with one finger on her chin.   If she guessed his internal struggle, she did not acknowledge it thank goodness.   “Let’s see.  Stan brought you clothes, too.  He said we should all rest up.  Dove destroyed your duster, and most of your special holster thing.  I did get the Jade Gun, your Glocks, and shotguns.  Stan said something about not leaving them around where they could be found by the police or something.  Oh! There are burgers.”

Olive jumped up to get them.

“Sorry.  They may be cold,” she said as she handed him three double-patty burgers.

He ripped the wrappers off and devoured all three in just a few swallows.  The greasy beef brought an uneasy truce between his human and vampire side.  The headache disengaged its claws.  Nausea and any lingering desire for Olive’s blood eased off enough for Crow to feel in control, sane, and less bipolar.

“Wow! Hungry?”

Crow licked his fingers.

“Should I get more?” Olive put her hands on her hips.

With the red meat toning down his magical side, Crow enjoyed the woman-ness of her as a man, just a man.  Her curves, her smile, her nurturing, all with a towel wrapped around her wet hair brought his humanity to the surface with a pure desire as a man for a woman instead of a monster for a maid.  He forgot for a moment, in the late afternoon soon peeking in the cracks of the hotel curtains, who he was and what he was.  His desire was to care for her not possess her.  Was it too much to ask for that right?

“Are there more here?”

“No.  That was the last few.  I can run out and get some more, the place is just around the corner.”

The answer was no.  He did not have the right to be a man.  She needed protecting and he, according to the servant tattoos on his hands, was the protector.  He was the one with the power and the experience to fight and fight he must.  But….something whispered….could he fight?  Twice he had faced the Gray, and twice only Olive’s blood had saved him.  Did he even have the ability to protect her?  Did he even have the strength to go up against Manson, the Gray and Fortunatus?

“You shouldn’t leave the room, so don’t worry about it right now.” Crow pushed the whisper of self-doubt away.  He stood and wrapped his arms around her in one swift shifting.

“Note to self …” Olive said, lifting her arms and linking her hands behind his neck.

“What?”

“Meat does wonders for your disposition, unlike my blood. That just makes you sad.”

“True for any man, but your blood’s amazing.   I feel unstoppable, aware, alive when I drink it.”  He touched his forehead to hers.  “The meat helped ground me a little.  It’s less rich.”

“Such nice things to say, kinda creepy they’re about my blood.”

Crow closed his eyes with a sigh and a shake of his head.  Again, the answer was no.  No moment of forgetting for the Dhampir son of Benj and Sophie.  He could not put the monster part aside for the mantel of humanity.  Olive gave him a little kiss and nudge with her nose.  He opened his eyes to her teasing grin.

Stan came out of the shower.

“How you feeling?”  He only raised one eyebrow at their embrace.

“Don’t ask and I won’t tell you.”  Crow stretched and groaned.  Olive turned away with a smile.

“What do we need to do?”

“Nothing till the sun sets.”

Crow headed for the other shower, something else that was good for a man’s disposition –scalding water, a shave, and clean clothes.  Dirty sweat and flecks of blood ran down the drain.  Steam surrounded him.  His mind drifted on the balmy waves of nothing until the water ran cold.

After the shower, changed into clean clothes, he dropped down on one of the queen beds with fresh sheets.  Rose nodded off in the puffy chair against the wall.  Stan snored on the other bed.  Olive danced around the room picking up trash, tiding towels, tucking a blanket around Rose.  She hummed to herself as she flitted.  Zephyr curled up on a pillow settled on the night stand.  Olive covered her with a white wash cloth.  The wiznit breathed softly, sound asleep.

“I’m going down to the gift shop.  Need anything?

“Olive?”  Crow cracked on eye.

“Don’t worry, I’m just going down stairs.  I’ll be fine.  Besides, I’m going crazy in here.  I saw some plants down there, so even if something happens I can protect myself until you can rescue me.”  She poked him in the chest with her finger and then bent down and kissed him.

Crow grimaced, too tired to argue.  Olive was the only one who had had any sleep, and she healed faster with plants around.  He could not bring himself to argue, so he pointed to the credit card in Stan’s wallet and closed his eyes.  Olive slipped quietly out the door.

“It’s good to see that look on your face,” Stain said.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was.”

“What look?” Crow propped his hands behind his head not really listening.  The thought of a battle without Olive’s blood resurfaced.  Like some dumb teen, he felt the need to prove himself.

“The one that says there might be something worth living for in this life beyond Manson.”

Did he?  Was there?  The ghost of a kiss touched his lips in a silent yes.

“You may be right, but let’s not say anything.  I wouldn’t want to hurt my tough guy reputation.”

“Heaven forbid,” Stan chuckled.

“Watch out.  You may have already passed me up.” Crow glanced at Rose in the corner.

Stan did not answer.  He rolled to the far side of the bed and slipped his hand in hers.  She squeezed his fingers without waking up.  In a few moments, his gentle breathing joined Rose and Zephyr’s.  Crow lay in the bed, coiled to spring.  Stan and Rose.  Seemingly out of nowhere, these two women walked into their lives.  Who was the more damned, the hunters or the women who loved them?  Rose, cause Stan slept holding her hand, gave Crow even more reason to check his skills.  He would not let Stan lose another woman to Manson anymore than he planned to let Manson have Olive.  Never.  The door knob turned.  Olive tip-toed back into the room.  She locked the door behind her.

“You’re supposed to be asleep,” she whispered.

“Waiting for you, beautiful,” he said, sitting up on one elbow.

Her whole face lit up.  She plopped into the bed at his feet with a blue plastic sack.

“Look.” She crossed her legs, and dumped several candy bars out on the duvet.  Crow picked up a Mars bar.  Chocolate and sugar?  Not as good as beef, not as good as blood, but a sufficient substitute for the moment.  Olive plucked a candle and a small ivy from the pile.

“A candle?”

“A witch needs a candle.”

Crow shook his head at her.  He turned in the bed and lay back down putting his head in Olive’s lap.  She ran her fingers through his hair and hummed.   He drifted off to sleep with the ivy reaching out to touch his arm.

The sun cast a veil of darkness over the earth as it sank below its curvature.  The moon, dressed in silver white, rose into the night sky.  Her weak light diffused the blackness in place of her more glorious sister.

                …in the beginning, a vision is always dark…Crow clenched his teeth, but could not suppress a growl.  Manson lounged on a couch with dramatic curved lines in a shadow-filled room.  Window-less walls hid any possible clues as to their location.  His recent struggle with the sun left a spatially disoriented feeling in his head.   No windows, and no sense of space meant no clue.  Manson for the win.  Crow should have had Stan bury him instead of just eating burgers.

                The only door in or out of the room opened and in came Fortunatus. 

                “You little piece….” Crow lost the sentence in a snarl.  Words left something to be desired when it came to Fortunatus.  “Someday, for Benj.” 

                Crow wished the visions let him project.  He wished he could fill the room with the hatred he felt for Fortunatus.  Just once, he would like to make that betraying piece of feces nervous.  Wait?  Crow glanced around the room.  Why was he here?  No one but Manson and his pet waited in the room.  There were no signs of tortured souls.  There were no mutilated victims.  Manson must have called him here cause it satisfied some sick whim.  Lovely. 

After straightening his cuffs and tie, Fortunatus opened the door to admit three outlandish vampires dressed in the latest distressed jeans and graphic tee trends with edgy, girly hairstyles, eyeliner, and sunglasses.

“You look like one of those idiotic rock bands dressed like that,” Manson sneered from the couch.  He crossed his legs not getting up to greet his guests.

“We may return to LeVidal, if you have no use for us.”  One of them stepped closer to Manson while gesturing back at the door.  Fortunatus closed it behind them.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Manson said studying his perfectly manicured nails.  “Besides you will want to see what I have created downstairs.  Even you, Kalogeros, will want to take off your silly sunglasses long enough to see this.”

“As you wish Manson, but remember we are doing this as a favor.  We feel no obligation to you.  Kaneís, allá tous eaf̱toús mas.”

Manson glanced at Fortunatus.

“No one but ourselves.”

Crow’s gut twisted.  How many years had it been since he last saw the Greeks?  Ten?  Fifteen?  Three of the oldest and most sadistic vampires indulging Manson did not come as a surprise, but it chilled him.  The Greeks with Manson made Crow’s burden bigger.  It changed the generational war from personal to planes.  All of LeVidal might join if promised the fun of human screams and blood.  Vampires, old, true not taken, flocking to Manson would bring him to the attention of the magical community.  But, he was still Crow’s problem.  The weight of what he witnessed pressed down on Crow’s shoulders.  No one.  No one would take out Manson but him.  And why was he seeing this?  Surely it was not to Manson’s benefit that he see an alliance with the Greeks?  Unless he wanted to taunt Crow with the inroads he had made with other magical creatures, like the demon he had joined with Dove.  Crow liked it better when Manson worked with only the Gray.  He liked it when Manson was too high and mighty, or ignorant, to work with anyone else.  This meeting was not a good sign.  It was dangerous.

“Fortunatus, take them down and show them our new toy shop?  And also the other room.” Manson waved them away.

Fortunatus hesitated.  Something new gleamed in his eye surprising Crow – weariness, disgust, and caution.  The vampire blinked and it was gone.  No way.  There was no way his soul, torn by murders, brought on this vision. Crow pushed the thought away.  Fortunatus had betrayed his father and had a hand in killing his mother.  That vampire deserved death more than anyone or anything except Manson.

With a bow, Fortunatus led the Greeks out the door…

Crow whispered a curse to the air of the hotel room filled with sleeping humans and witches.  Why had he surrounded himself with people he cared about?  People he cared about always died.  He and Stan must have been born under the worst set of stars.  The muscles in his back twitched with that ‘deck stacked against him’ feeling tightening them.

“Damn the Greeks, Fortunatus, and Manson all to hell.”

Crow’s skin crawled.   What if they came now?  What if he could not fight them without Olive’s blood?  He could not drink from her again.  Half damned he might be, but half damned could damn an innocent all the way.

He got out of bed and started pacing.  Everyone slept.  Their quiet, slightly off beat breathing grated on him.  He caught himself rubbing the back of his neck, and shifting from one end of the room to the other.  For fifty years, some of them with his Mom, most of them alone, he had never settled in one place for long.  The instinct bred in him since the beginning was to avoid Manson by staying right out of reach.  Never stay still.  Out of reach was where he wanted to be after that vision.  The walls of the hotel closed in around him.  His self-doubt filled him.  The night air sang a siren song to his vampire blood with sweet music.  And something else, something else…Someone or something out there.  Could he handle it without magical blood?

He needed to get out of this hotel room.  Now.  And he was hungry.  Again.  Hungry and not thinking about Olive’s blood.  He did not want that, not every again.  He could go for a steak.  Rare, bloody.  Crow picked up a napkin, wrote a quick note to Stan and shifted over to Zephyr’s pillow.  He poked her with a finger.  She ignored him.  He nudged her again.

She opened one eye at him.  Crow crooked his finger.

“When do I get my pocket back?” She picked herself up and fluttered to his shoulder.  She plopped down, stretched, and yawned.  Gathering two Glocks and his Jade Gun, Crow kissed Olive’s forehead and headed out.  Time to settle his gnawing fear once and for all.

The moon drew heavy clouds close, and wrapped them around herself.  The air, too warm for winter, was sticky with humidity.   Each droplet of invisible moisture was a vestiges of the storm Olive had called from the south.  A cool wind drove the clouds on.  The moonbeams illuminated their edges and turned them silver.  The moon called to him. She called to his vampire side, the side which had drunk Olive’s blood twice in 24 hours.  She sang a song of seduction.  She sang of the beauty of the night.

Crow soaked in the darkness.  It sat around him like a cloak, all grays and darker grays.  Zephyr rode his shoulder as he took the back exit from the hotel.  He rolled his neck loosening up.

“There is something out here.  In town and it is hunting.”

Zephyr turned her head this way and that scenting.

“It’s a demon hunting something, maybe us, maybe not.  With Dove being bound to that demon she has ties with them now.  She can probably call and control them.”

“Comforting thought.  It’s not her, though?”

“No.  It’s a different one.”

She was right.  Crow could smell it.  He could smell the ozone, fire, heat smell of the demon.  Unlike Angels which smelled of pure sunlight with a hint of rain, or flowers, leaves, living beautiful things depending on their type, demons smelled of ash, charred wood and burnt flesh.

This demon smelled like any demon, burnt, fried and crispy, yum.

“Great.  I was more in the mood for a vampire.  But, I guess a demon will have to do.”

He left the lighted exit of the hotel moving instinctively into the shadows along the unlit back alley.

“Got him?”

Zephyr scented again.

“There.” She pointed south into town.  “He seems distracted.”

Crow sensed it.  Whether the demon was hunting Olive or not he needed this fight.  Her blood still echoed in his veins, even with the little he had drunk, even with all it had to overcome, mildly diluted by burgers, candy bars, and sleep.  Her blood was some high, pounding, pounding, pounding.  The demon fight would rid him of her magical.  Plus, he could prove he did not need her what was in her veins.  If he did, she would not be there to save him.  Point proven either way.  He leapt onto the side of the building to his left and caught a window sill.  Lunged up and right to the hotel side, he caught a fire escape.  Back and forth up the four stories, he cleared the building and landed on the roof.

Leaping from wall to wall, tracking his prey over the roof tops proved easier than shifting through the streets, and more fun.  Crow took a last look back at the hotel.  A candle burned bright in the window of their room.

“A candle?” he whispered.

“To light the way back home,” Zephyr said.

“Just like Mom, but I’m coming home.”

The itchiness left Crow.  Calm settled between his shoulders like warm sun on his back.  For the first time in his life someone waited for him to come home.  He did not plan to disappoint her.

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray, Part 1 – Love at First Sight : (2009) Flight of the SUV

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

Crow returned to a world of pandemonium and pain.  Three long gouges shredded the skin and tattoos of his chest.  Stan and Olive yelled and screamed.  The SUV swerved across the road.  Bullets flew.  Four assassins on sport bikes trailed behind them, handguns on full auto.  Stan kept them at bay by swerving the vehicle, never giving them a path along its side.  Olive used Crow’s gun, but her aim was horrible.  With one hand pressed against the bloody slashes at his chest, Crow rolled over in his seat and took the Jade Gun from her.  She jerked, surprise at his sudden reanimation.

“Nice to have you back, kid!”  Stan said.

He whipped around a curve.  The back of the SUV fishtailed.  Turning into the spin, Stan regained control and picked up speed.  Cliffs rose above them and fell below as they headed through low mountains to the valley’s spread beneath their feet and to the south.  Crow leaned out the window and fired.  The gun ejected one, two, three, four empty casings.  Two bikes went down.

“Gimme a rock slide! Anything!” he yelled back at Olive.

Olive threw her hands up into the air and a green light shown in her eyes.  Roots thrust up and out of the asphalt, the fastest growing season ever.  The road buckled.   It flung the assassins over the side in a hail of rocks and dirt.

Crow pulled in his head, reloaded, and stuck the Jade Gun in his waistband.  He winced in pain.

“Where’s Zephyr?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

“She’s not with you!?”  Stan glanced at Crow’s slashed chest and then back at the road.  “Hope she wasn’t.”

Olive leaned forward grabbing Crow’s shoulder.  “Are you okay?”

“I’ve still got some of your blood.  Just give me a moment.”

Crow leaned back in the chair.  He grabbed the arm rests and dug his fingers in as the healing found its momentum.  First one and then the other wound inflicted by the assassins’ hollow-points closed.  The mushroomed bullet heads joined the casings on the floor as his body pushed them out.  Veins, nerves, tissues and skin knit back together.

“Now what?” Stan asked.

“Just drive.” He rolled away with a groan.  The chest wound burned.  His body fought the poison from the claws.  Hot and cold chills spiked up and down his body.  The slashes re-knit, slowly.   Instead of being sliced open cell by cell, Crow healed cell by cell.  He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together.  The smell of his drying blood turned his stomach.  Under it, under the smell of blood, gunpowder, fear and worn tiers he could smell her – Dove.  Half Gray Coven Mother, half demon.  He could smell her on him.

“Crow?”

He raised his head.  His watering eyes caused the little person sitting on the arm of the seat to swim and shimmer.  She raised white spotted wings at him, and her antennas stirred in the wind from his broken window.  Relief rode the top of the waves of painful healing.  The poison fought back.  It slowed the normal quick reknit to a torturous crawl.  Crow screamed thrashing in his chair.  Strobe after strobe of healing rolled through his body.  It battled the demon’s venom.  Sight, sound and noise disappeared.  The world ceased.  Pain alone told him he still lived.

Done.

Just like that, the pain shut off.  His body relaxed, whole and new, victorious.

Crow sat up.  Sweat soaked his clothing and what little was left of his shirt.  He ran his hands up through his dripping hair.  Olive reached out to him.  He turned towards her sniffing the air to make sure she unharmed.  She laid her small hand on his chest.  Her fingers probed his skin through the rips in his shirt.

“No wound.  No scar.  Even your tattoos are whole.”

“Joys of being a vampire.  It takes very powerful, very dark magic for a vampire to keep his scars.”

Olive leaned up, kissed his cheek and said, “I like you scar free, thank you very much.”

She sat back in her chair leaving Crow speechless and whispered to Rose who patted her hand with a tattoo mirror reflecting a raven.  Zephyr flew up to Crow’s shoulder.  She sat down grasping his ear.  Stan kept his eyes on the black empty road before them.  Yellow lines passed through the light of the headlights and out again into the night.  Stan cut his eyes over to Crow and raised one eyebrow in question.  Slipping his hand around the Jade Gun, Crow shook his head.  Something gnawed at the back of his mind like an itch he could not reach.  Something beyond the bubble of light worried Crow.  Something coming from Manson.  Six assassins?  A bit mild for Manson.

“Behind your seat, Olive, should be a duffel bag.  Unzip it and pull out one of the guns,” Crow instructed her. He could not sit still anymore.  Stan pushed the SUV a little faster.  He guided it out of the mountains surrounding the high valley where they left Olive’s house.  The next valley floor opened below them.  They shot out from the mountains to a straight flat road and sleeping land.  Beyond the headlights, the cold night was bright with the full moon and stars unimpeded by city lights.  In the distance, beyond another row of the mountain range’s knees a glow from a small town shown.  Here and there snow clung to clumps of grass.  No green showed in the valley yet.  All the flora and fauna slept in the ghostly light of the moon.

Something rubbed up against Crow’s senses as Olive turned to reach over the back seat for his pack.

“Down!”

Crow launched himself out of his seat.  He rolled onto the bench between Rose and Olive.   They scrambled to get out of his way.  Shifting, Crow body slammed the dark shadow rearing up in the back of the SUV.  The bullet-riddled back door swung open with the force of his lunge.  They flew out and slammed into the asphalt.  Crow rolled off and shifted away.  His body reverberated with the force of the impact with the road even with the extra padding supplied by the attacker.  Coming to a stop, Crow crouched and looked up ready to spring.  In the distance red break lights flashed.

“Keep going, Stan,” Crow whispered.

The lights went dark as if Stan could read his mind.  The headlights diminish in the distance.

Laughter made him flinch.

“Very good.  Very good, Dhampir.  I heard you where impressive.  Shall we see?” Sitting straight up from the waist, the man’s red eyes flashed in the silver night.

Crow watched him, wary, and spat.  He had taken on full bloods before.  And he had Olive’s blood.  Crow grinned.  His veins sang.

“This should be fun.”

The vampire stood and rolled his head and shoulders.  Things snapped and popped into place.

“After I kill you-”

Crow interrupted with a volley of shots as he palmed the Jade Gun.  Zephyr, the wild wiznit, blessed each bullet with the power of sunlight.  They packed a powerful punch into the vampire’s body.  It stall him mid-sentence.  He sat there with a surprised look on his face.

“That was rather rude.”

Shifting, Crow slammed his fists into the vampire’s chest.  Right.  Left.  Right.  Left.  The rib cage smashed.  Crow grabbed the vampire, flung him in the air and leapt after him.  Fifteen feet over the road, Crow moved to body slam him.  The vampire twisted like a cat, caught Crow’s hand, and forced Crow below him.  Crow slammed into the ground with the full weight of the vampire driving him into the blacktop.  It crumbled beneath him.

Without a thought to his own crushed muscle and bone, Crow flipped then over, straddled the vampire, yanked his hand free, and drove it towards the vampire’s face.  The vampire dodged.  Crow punched through pavement.

The vampire rolled putting himself back on top.  Before the undead could throw his own punch, Crow flipped his legs up, and threw the vampire over his head.  He followed through using the momentum to pull himself up and over the undead.  Crow landed on his feet.

More of the road cracked and crumbled under him.  They faced off.  Fists flew.  They pushed one another back and forth.  The Jade Gun flew from Crow’s hand.  Slide back, it lay empty on the road.  Zephyr fluttered over it, out of the way.  The vampire smashed his fist into Crow’s shoulder catching Crow off guard.  The bone pulverize.  Crow dropped, falling on his back.  The vampire leapt in the air.

He fell towards Crow, feet ready to smash his chest into oblivion.  At the last second, Crow rolled towards Zephyr.  The vampire’s knees buckled under him.

Crow saw it. An opening.  He grabbed the undead’s head.  The moment of truth and fear flashed across the red eyes.  With a twist and pop, Crow yanked the creature’s head from his shoulders.  Shock spread across the vampire’s face.  Crow dropped the head beside the corpse.  The skin drew back from the skull and sank against the bones, dry leather and rot.

“What will the road crews make of this mess?” He muttered glancing at the smashed highway

“It looks like a giant took a hammer to it.”  Zephyr said.  She fluttered a few inches above the road dragging the Jade Gun over.

The vampire body turned to ash and blew away in the winter wind.

Crow bent down and took the Jade Gun from her.  He reloaded and held out his hand.  Zephyr flew to him on silent wings her antenna waving.  A look of worry creased her face.

“Zeph?”

“Listen.”

Crow tilted his head and focused.  The first hints of pain licked across his skin.  He ignored it and listened.  The sound of squealing wheels came to him through the crisp winter air, a crash as metal scrapped metal, then gunshots.  His head flew up.

He shifted.  His healing body screamed in protest.  Crow silenced it.  Down the road of black, faster and faster over the yellow lines.  His heart pounded.  Why had he taken so long to slay the vampire?  He should have killed him and gone back.  How could he be so stupid?  What better way to get to them than to distract him?

The SUV lay across the road on its side.

Stan shot at shadows from the passenger side window, now looking up at the stars.  Blood ran down his face and soaked his white shirt.  Olive and Rose stood back to back where the passenger doors used to be.  Rose held her mirror up reflecting starlight and moonlight onto the shadows.  Olive, tinged with spring green, called on the sleeping grass to rise up and trap them.

A shadow shot in front of Crow.  He snatched it out of the air.  Zephyr hissed in his ear.  Once a fairy, the ugly creature in his hand chattered and foamed at the mouth.  Manson had ripped its gossamer wings off.  Messy stitching replaced them with tattered bat wings. Blood seeped from the wounds.

“The eyes!” Zephyr shrieked leaning away, hiding herself in Crow’s hair.

The eyes, which should have been pink, purple, cherry red, yellow, or any flower color were blacker than the night.  Crow brought the mutation closer to study the eyes.  It scratched him across the face.  He jerked back dropping the mutilated fairy.  Blood ran from three deep groves in his cheek – the last of Olive’s blood dropped to the ground as the wound healed.

Crow reached out.  He re-caught the creature, but kept it at arm’s length.

“How do I kill it?”

“I don’t know.  It’s cursed, cursed, cursed,” Zephyr chanted.

Crow snapped its neck and the creature slumped.  A silver shadow with sparkling wings pulled from the body, bowed, and disappeared.

“Seems easy enough.”

Left and right he reached out catching and releasing the souls of the cursed fey.  Zephyr calmed down as they made their way to the SUV.  Stan shot the last one as Crow approached.  Silence.  It pressed down on them, a suffocating vacuum of noiselessness.  Stan reloaded as Crow lifted Olive and Rose from the flipped SUV.

“What happened?”

“They came out of nowhere, swarmed in the back and I lost control,” Stan said.  He stuck his old .45 magnum, given to him by Jack, Crow’s father’s friend, fifty years ago, in its holster.  He broke open his shotgun and fed it shells.

“Are you okay?” Crow asked Olive.

“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” Stan answered in a sarcastic voice.

Crow glared at him.

“I’m a little shook up,” Olive smiled at Stan. “But I’m okay.  What happened to you?”

“Slayed a vampire.”

“That’s not good, not surprising, but not good.  Was he young? Old? Taken?” Stan said.

“Older, not a Taken.”

“Lovely.”

Crow went to the back and grabbed his duffel crumpled against the side of the SUV.  He stripped off his ruined shirt and pulled on a fresh black one.  Was it his second or third shirt today?  Not a good sign.  Not a good sign he could not remember.  Not a good sign he had to keep changing them.  Maybe he should buy stock in the t-shirt company.

“Why is a full blood vampire after us?” Olive asked.

Crow opened a hidden compartment in what used to be the floor of the SUV.  He ignored Olive’s question.  There could be more vampires out there.  He wanted to take care of them without a body-slamming fight each time.  An all out brawl was inefficient and played into Manson’s hand.  And there was Dove….what if she came?

“Crow?”

From the floor, he yanked a complicated holster system which let him carry four Glocks under his arms and two shot guns down by his legs.  He adjusted each gun, buckle and snap until everything was in place.   With a belt of ammo around his hips, he jerked his black duster back on, and filled the pockets with shells.  Crow reloaded the Jade Gun and thrust it into a holster in the small of his back.

“Stan?  You need ammo?”

“Stan, since Crow won’t talk, tell me what’s going on,” Olive demanded.

“Manson’s taunting us with the cursed fey and the assassins.  It’s the vamps working for him that are the real danger, especially at night,” Stan explained, joining Crow at the back to rearm.

Crow ignored his accusing glare.  If he did not want to talk about it, he was not going to talk about it.

“So that vampire worked for Manson.  He sent him,” Rose repeated in her softest voice.

“Hit the nail on the head, sister” Crow said.  He turned to Stan. “You notice he’s gotten very quick with his response time?”

“Yeah, I noticed.  I also noticed the new twisted horrors up his sleeve.  Mutilated fairies?”

“We should’ve left the house right after we got back to this plane.  Stupid to sit around,” Crow muttered.  He stretched his back.  Several things popped back into place.

“You couldn’t have known,” Rose said.  She put a gentle hand on Crow’s shoulder.

He flinched, and shrugged away.  “Yes, we could have, and should have.”

“How does a witch recruit vampires?” Olive said.  Crow heard the edge in her voice.  Anger or fear?  Both?

“They flock to him,” Stan said.  ”Fortunatus has worked with him almost since the beginning….”

Crow growled deep in his throat.

“That’s the one who betrayed your Father.”  Understanding dawned on Olive’s face.

“Bingo,” Crow said.

Olive wrapped her arm through his and put her head on his shoulder.  Crow stood there like an idiot unsure of what to do.  Why was she being nice when he was being a boor?  He searched her face for anger, hurt feelings, and frustration.  It was all there, but covered by a blanket of wise pity.  She saw him.  She saw the scars, not on his skin, but on his life.  She saw, understood, pitied, and accepted him.    Crow took her hand.

“We’re bring followed,”  Rose said.

Everyone looked back the way they had come.  Rose held her mirror up to the moon.

“Do you see it, dear?”

Olive squinted.

“Yeah, she’s right.  We’re leaving some sorta trail.”

“That explains a lot,” Stan said.

“Us or the SUV?” Crow asked.

Olive looked at Rose.

The old lady studied her mirror.  The moonlight glinted in the wisps of hair which escaped from her bun.  They waved around her head giving her the cliché look of a scryer.

“You, Dhampir, Olive, and Wiznit are marked.”

“The witches,” Stan said. “When you rescued Olive, they marked you.  Manson’s using the link to follow you.  That’s how those mutations found us.”

“They were terrible,” Rose said with a shudder.

Zephyr nodded in agreement.

“How do we break the link?”

“I think I can,” Olive said.

With a soft smile and a white tinge to her skin, she cloaked them in a sleeping seasonal skin.  A peaceful chill settle around Crow’s shoulders like a cloak.  It soaked into his coat, becoming one with him, making him one with the winter landscape.

“Well have to take to the land for a while, but we should blend with the environment and lose the trace.”

“Stan?” Crow said.

“Sounds good to me,” Stan said.  He checked the load on his backup Glock and shoved it into his back holster.

Rose bandaged Stan’s head while Olive and Crow gathered extra clothes, maps, and weapons.  They headed off into the valley away from the road.  Crow took point hand in hand with Olive.  Zephyr rode his shoulder.  Rose picked her way over the ice blanketed plants holding up the hem of her lace dress.  Stan, shotgun in hand, brought up the rear.  They left the road, their vehicle on its side, and hopefully, the trace behind.

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray, Part 1 – Love at First Sight : (2009) Creating a Monster

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

“He wasn’t involved at all?” Stan asked.  He accepted a cup of coffee from Rose as he took a seat at the bright green kitchen table.  Rose passed Olive a cup of steaming Earl Gray and offered coffee to Crow.

“Black and strong as you can make it,” he said turning his chair around and resting his arms on the back.

“Crow?” Stan leaned forward.

“No he wasn’t there. But I did basically disrespected his coven, so he’ll be involved now.”  Crow, dressed in a clean gray t-shirt and his spare duster, took a sip of his coffee.  It was not black or strong but sweet and creamy.  He set it down.  Stan glared at him.  Crow responded with a raised eyebrow.  What had Stan and Rose had been up to while he saved Olive.  Olive? He glanced sideways at her.  What would she do now that he kissed her?  Would she be the brat he remembered, or would she be the woman dancing in the storm?  What would he do?  Crow, the son of Sophie, had kissed a girl.  She might be in more danger now than before he rescued her.

“I think we restarted the war.”  He leaned his elbows on the table, his shoulders slumped.  To hunt or not hunt Mason?  He seemed constantly torn between hiding from Mason to keep people he loved safe, or hunting Manson when he went into hiding to lick his wounds.  Would it ever end?  Crow was a Dhampir – half-human, half vampire.  He could not die, not by any ‘normal’ means.  It would not end until one of them killed the other.  Crow knew who he wanted to be.  The one doing the killing.  But, he now had to face the fact that they had added two more people to the list of probable death by Manson.  A bloody wall of anger crashed down on Crow as he imagined Manson with Olive.  His guts twisted in a knot at the image.

“It was our turn anyway, kid.  Don’t sweat it,” Stan said.

Crow ran his hands up through his hair and clasped them behind his head.  Next to his chair, on a little stand, sat the ivy which had shown him part of Olive’s vision.  It reached out with a small tendril and touched his arm.  He brushed it way.

“But next time let’s just send up a bunch of flares spelling out your name.” Stan stared into his mug.  The longer he sat there the more his face drained of color.

“And I was just beginning to hope he’d disappeared forever.”  Even as he said the words, Crow knew it was a lie.  He reveled in the banishment of the Gray from the Material Plane.  Crow hoped he had pissed Manson off enough to get him out of the shadows so he could pound him to death.  He wanted to finish this.  If he could use the rescue of Olive to jerk Manson around, he was glad of it.  Too many years had passed.  Too many people dead now.  Too many monsters released on the world.

“Go over it one more time,” Stan said.

Though they had filled Stan and Rose in with the full story of the rescue, they went over it again.  Crow groaned when Olive said she tried to heal him with her last bit of summer before Zephyr told her he was a half-vampire.  In his weakened state, it almost killed him.  Neither Olive nor Zephyr said anything about his loss of control during his feeding, the loss which almost killed her, and the bloodlust which almost killed Zephyr.  He silently thanked both women for their discretion even though Stan could put two and two together.  The guy had the scars to prove what Crow could do in a blind rage or a feeding frenzy.  Crow shook his head, ashamed.  He hated the vampire need for blood coursing through his own veins.  He hated it almost as much as he hated Manson.  Crow had no control over his own life.  He never had a chance to be anything but the damned child of Benj and Sophie.  Olive cleared her throat drawing his attention.  She winked at him as she left their shouting match and following kiss out of the public version as well.  What was he supposed to make of that?

“So who is this man?  What did I restart by calling you to save me?  And, I guess more importantly, who are you?  Why is he involved with you?” Olive asked.  “We met once before, right?” she added.

“How could you have called me if we hadn’t?”

“I called out to someone powerful enough to save me.”

“I bet your call came to Crow via Rose cause of his connection with the Gray,” Zephyr said.

“That makes sense.  The call would have gotten tangle in all that pretty easily.  But, I have met you before.”

Crow rubbed his face.  “In LeVidal, several years ago.  You were with Emma.”

“Oh yeah!  You were drunk.  At least I thought you were.”

“Probably.”

“Wow, I’m impressed.  He can hardly get a buzz and he got full on drunk?” Zephyr said with a twinkle in her eye.

Crow flipped her off.

“I thought so.”  She shrugged.  “You were so so….gruff.”  Olive waved her hands in the air looking for the right word.  He glared at her.  She hooked her foot around his calf and rubbed it with her toes sending sparks up and down his skin.  Crow stalled for composure by taking a big gulp of Rose’s sugary coffee.  He choked and coughed.  Zephyr, making friends with the ivy in the corner, giggled at him.  Crow lunged for her, but she fluttered just out of reach.

“I’m I missing something?  I don’t exactly call the situation we’re in humorous.”

“Tell me you’re story.  Tell me what is going on,” Olive asked, settling everyone down.  Crow tried to ignore the merry laugher in her eyes and focus on Manson.

“The Gray work for . . .”

“Back up, Crow,” Stan interrupted.

“What?”

“You need to back up to Sophie and Benj.”

A knife plunged into his heart, twisted, and then yanked out would have hurt Stan less than invoking those two names.  Crow saw the twitch at the corner of his eye.  Stan’s hand subconsciously rubbed his chest where the old scars lay.  After so many years, the wounds were still open and always would be.  The happy warmth of Olive’ flirting dissipated.  Crow wanted to hold onto it, but it was smoke in his hands.  Manson beckoned.  Crow followed as always.

“My father was a vampire, and my mother was an echo of the SoulReader witch, Manson.  The witches still don’t know how she was created.  An echo has never been heard of before or since,” Crow said.  He told of their first kiss, her gifts, Benj’s salvation, and their love which conceived him and about how both had died at the hands of Manson along with all their friends, but Stan.  He did not tell Olive that he had, at 16, watched his Mother be tortured and killed through the link which bound him to his parents.  Another little game played by Manson to try to trap him and Stan, or just drive them to insanity, which it almost did.  He did not tell her about Fortunatus’ second betrayal of his family which led to his mother’s capture by Manson in the first place.  He did not tell Olive how he had endured every wound inflicted on the person who gave him life and love.  He did not tell her of the scars Stan still carried on his chest, arms, and back.  Scars Crow had inflicted on Stan when he tried to keep the young Dhampir from running to save his mother and walking right into a trap.

As they told the parts of their tale which were not as painful to share, Stan followed Crow’s lead and added nothing which Crow did not already start telling.  Some things were just too hard to talk about, too hard to tell someone who was not there.

Crow did tell Olive about having all his father’s ability without needing, like some druggy, to drink blood.  He battled the desire for it and usually won.  He told her that he had his mother’s ability to see the damaging of innocent souls, but it was unreliable.

“So you didn’t need to drink my blood after the attack?”  Olive asked fingering the two scabs on her neck from his fangs.

“I’ve never been pushed that far.  I think Zephyr was right, without blood at that point I might have died.  Or I would have laid there for a long time while I healed real slowly.”

“Or he might have gone onto something worse.  A vampire without blood is zombie like, loses all his self-control, loses his soul,” Zephyr said.

Olive shuttered.  “I learned about your mother when I first gained my powers.  She was a unique witch.  You said that, like your mother, you can use the SoulReading to see serial killers?”  Her face paled.  She crossed her arms protectively in front of her.  Crow resisted the urge to reach out to her.  She had called him.  She had to deal with what she got.

“That’s right.  Sophie was Manson’s echo, and Crow is the son of the echo.” Stan answered.  “Experience taught us that Manson has some control over what his echo sees, so we’re real cautious with any visions Crow has.  Even when they are just normal serial killers.”

“Normal serial killers? That’s a scary thought,” Olive mumbled looking at Crow.

Crow dropped his eyes down to his hands and the new tats there.  Without a word he pushed back his chair and got up.  He needed air.  It was too much, all of it.  The feeding on Olive was something he had never done to that extent.  Sure, he had had blood before, like at Manhunter’s, but to almost drain her completely?  Crow shuddered.  But why stop there?  No.  Follow the damning feeding with a trip down memory lane.  One with all the horror of Bundy and Gacy and others, seen through the eyes of a child.  He needed some space and something to clear his mind.  His head pounded and a red veil hung between him and the world.

He stepped out onto the porch and leaned over the railing.  A cool breeze blew through his hair.  Before he knew what he was doing, Zephyr handed him a lit cigarette.  He accepted it without a word.  She sat down on his shoulder and watched him watching the garden.  Crow leaned his tattooed arms on the railing of the porch and took a long slow drag on the cigarette.

“You know they loved you very much.”

“Just don’t say anything, Zephyr, please.”

She went silent.  They watched the sun dip towards bed.  All the snow had melted in the yard, but for a few little patches of white protected by puddles of shade.  Zephyr slipped off his shoulder.  He turned to look for her as Olive came out.

The sun turned her happy garden a golden orange.

“The roses say they like you.”  She wrapped the old cardigan close around her, and crossed her arms over her chest.  “The trees say you have deep roots.  But, they also say you’re wounded and frozen.”

He stared at the partially smoked cigarette and flicked it away.

“I shared my parent’s connection, Olive.  I became aware of them almost as soon as I was conceived.  I felt the connection end when Manson killed my father, and when he killed my mother.  Before that I felt him torture and kill the people they loved.”  Crow pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to show her the list of crossed out names.  “I was born with this list already burned into my skin, already knowing my mother would die, knowing only Stan would survive.”

“You’re gonna keep hunting him until you find him and kill him, aren’t you?”

“Damn right,” Crow whispered.

The sun beams lay across the new seasonal service tattoos on his hands.  It touched the moth and candle on his left arm, and the stallion on his right.  He sensed the ink etched beneath the list, the message from his parents – ‘I love you for always and miss you forever’ – the blood soaked, torn veil draped over a coffin on his chest which marked the gifts his mother and father had given him.  The giant raven on his back warmed.  Each line pulsed with life and energy, ready to go.

“How can I help you hunt and kill him?”

Crow straightened up, turned, and kissed her.  He had not intended to, but when she did not give the speech about how wasteful revenge was, she earned a kiss. He was more than happy to pay up.

A gun shot rang out across the yard.

Crow shoved Olive down onto the porch.  He caught the bullet in his shoulder with a grunt.  A man with a black mask aimed around a large oak off to the side.  Olive commanded the yard to attack.  Crow plunged into the blood lust still raging inside him, and shifted across the porch and yard in the blink of an eye.  He ripped the gun from the assassins’ fingers.  Holding it up in front of his face, Crow broke it in half with one hand.  He tore the mask off the man’s face with a snarl, and gagged.  Manson’s mutilation twisted the skin into the mask of a monster.  The image of a blood soaked veil, a SoulReader’s sign, tattooed the assassin’s forehead.  Unlike Sophie’s etched on Crow’s chest, this one had a maniac with a knife ripping more holes in the veil.  Only Manson had that sign.

With a snap, he broke the man’s neck.  Another shot rang out.  A bullet ran through Crow’s back breaking ribs and lodging in his lung.  He spun around and shifted.  The assassin leapt down from the fence on the opposite side of the yard.  Olive’s roses tangled him with thorny branches.  Crow yanked the mask off, checked to make sure the tattoo marked him, and broke his neck.  He glanced around.  Olive stood in the middle of her yard.  The trees danced over her, bare branches waving back and forth in anger.  Crow shifted to her, took her hand, and rushed inside.

“Stan!  We need to move!”

Stan jumped up banging into the table and knocking over his coffee mug.  He took in Crow’s two bullet wounds.

“What is it?”

“Assassins.”

“Manson’s?”

“Know anyone else out to get us?  We’re easier to find sitting here. I won’t know where he is, or what’s going on, until I have a reading.  I might or I might not, so you drive.”

“Why didn’t you ask one of them?” Stan ignored his spilt coffee.

“Couldn’t.  Their tongues were cut out and their lips were sewn shut.  Let’s go!”

“Oh dear.”  Rose’s hand fluttered to her cheek.  Stan took it and pulled her towards the front door.

Olive grabbed her jacket, and Crow herded them out to Stan’s SUV, covering them with the Jade Gun.  Crow took one glance back at his bike and shrugged.  He would miss it, but he could replace it.

“Come on!”  Stan called.

Crow took a quick head count, two women, one wiznit, him and Stan.  Too many.  Too many ways for Manson to get at them.

“Where to?”  Stan started the engine.

“I don’t care.  I’ll know soon enough if Manson’s on the move again.  More murders always come.”

“Amen and amen.” Stan drove off.

Olive screamed from the back.  The window behind her shattered.  Crow slumped over in the front passenger seat.

…In the beginning, a vision it is always dark . . . disoriented, and dizzy.  Crow’s eyes would not focus.  It had been so long…

A pinprick of gray snagged him.  He wriggled towards it.  A scream of agony brought everything into focus.

Manson stood in a square of light cast from an uncovered fluorescent bulb above him.  On the concrete floor knelt the sing-song witch, Dove.  They seemed to be in an abandoned warehouse, with no branding or company slogans to be seen. 

“Good move, Manson,” Crow whispered.  The murderer had grown cautious in the years between their last vision – the trap for Stan.  A nondescript place kept Crow from getting a lead on the location.

“You will have to plan better in the future, yes?”

“Yes, master.” Fear drove her girly voice to a higher pitch.

“Your Mother served me well, but you, Dove?  I don’t trust you.”  Manson held up a hand to forestall the Dove’s interruption.  “You will find a new witch, NOW, to complete the coven, or I will reject you as the new Mother.  And you will unite yourself to this, my loyal servant, so I can trust you.”

Dove cried out as a demon appeared at Manson’s right hand.  A chill ran across Crow’s skin.  One of the only creatures native to the Spirit Plane, the demon had legs like a goat and long arms tipped with jagged claws.  Spittle dripped from its fanged maw while black pits for eyes examined the sobbing witch.  The smell of brimstone and burning wood filled the room.  Crow hated demons – stinking, stupid and powerful, not a good combination.  One being tied to a witch like Manson gave him the creeps.  Never an angel around when he needed one.

The witch pleaded with Manson.  She swore her fidelity as long as he did not make her bind with the demon.  Bile rose in Crow’s throat.  He would almost rather watch Manson torture and kill someone than watch him perform this vile magic.  He reminded himself that Dove was one of the Gray.  That she had helped kill his parents, friends, and had hurt Olive.  It did hot help.

The demon turned from his prey and cast its soulless eyes on Crow.  Manson smiled.  He patted the demon on the arm. 

“I know you’re here, Crow.  My pet can see you.  You’ve done well, grown.  You took on a full Coven to rescue a girl you didn’t even know.  How sweet.  But I liked you better when you cared about no one but yourself, something you vampires have an amazing ability to do.  Are you growing soft, Crow?”

Manson turned back to Dove begging on the floor.  “You killed the Mother, sent my coven back to the Spirit Plane, and avoided my fist few assassins.  You know I sent those as soon as you killed the first witch?  She told me where you were when you sent her back to the Spirit Plane.  My pet took the information from her and brought it to me.”

Dove gagged.  Crow agreed – better not to know how the demon got the message from the witch.

“Sloppy Crow.  Sloppy of you to wait around.  But, I’ll enjoy your reaction to some of my new pets.  Your timing was perfect.  I was just about to come looking for you, when you came to me.”  Manson shook his head and laughed. “Now watch what you have required me to do.”

He gestured at Dove kneeling on the floor.  The demon took her.  Crow wanted to vomit.  His body heaved trying to purge what happened below from his very being.  He pushed the vision away.  Nothing came from watching Dove’s personality violated, and he knew pleasanter ways to find out what Manson created then watching it be done.  Fighting it when it arrived was his preferred method.

Crow tried to leave, but the vision would not stop.  He pushed against it as he had so many times over the years and through different killers.  Nothing moved.  He could not return to his own body. 

Manson laughed again.

“How are you enjoying my show?”

He could not pull his eyes away from the terror on Dove’s face as her body was ripped open and her soul shredded.  Crow screamed with her as he experienced the ravaging of the demon.  The creature sank and melded with her pain, her blood, her body.  The two became a twisted one.

Crow had had enough.  He would not come and go at Manson’s beck and call to suffer through the horror he inflicted on friends and enemies alike.  Time to try something his mother had told him once.

He lunge for Manson, for Manson’s hidden inner being, his core.  Crow sank through Manson’s body, and caught his Soul sitting outside his blackened tower enjoying his pets play time.

Plummeting down, Crow knocked him from his outside throne. 

Manson screamed in fury.

“Why watch that, when I can do this?” Crow drove a rock hard fist into Manson’s face.  Manson’s head snapped back.  His eyes rolled up into his head.  Manson dropped to the ground.

“Wow, Manson.  It looks like trapping me here wasn’t such a good idea.  Thanks for the opportunity to kick your ass.  That makes me, what?  Two up now.”

Crow hauled him up by the neck, lifted him in the air, and body slammed him to the ground of his inner soul.  Manson, still reeling from the attack, did not soften the flagstone walkway before he hit it.  Crow reached for him again.  Manson flung his hand out.  A mass of images bombarded Crow.  Images of Sophie being tortured filled his mind.  Crow stumbled back and crossed his arms in front of his face to ward off the visual blows.  They came faster and faster interspersed with images of Dove’s forced union with the demon.  Crow fell to his knees. Old pain blossomed all over his body. 

Manson’s trap slipped. 

He sensed the exit and turned to leave.  An image of his father flashed before him – an image of his father being staked in the chest by Manson.  Fortunatus held Benj up while Sophie watched.  Crow remembered the connection breaking.  He remembered his Mother’s pain as her soul shattered.  Anger boiled inside him. 

He pushed through the vision of his father.  Manson stood right in front of him, gloating over him.  Crow drove his right fist up into Manson’s kidneys, left, then right again.  Manson’s knees buckled.  Crow brought his fist up catching Manson’s mouth and nose.  Blood spurted all over Manson’s face.

Claws of fire raked Crow’s torso, opening him up.  The pain fast-action released the trap flinging Crow’s soul from the vision.  He flew out of Manson’s body and aimed for his own.  Dove stood over her Master’s fallen body.  Her eyes became black pools as she watched Crow leave.  Long claws tipped her fingers and dripped Manson’s blood.  The witch and demon were one…

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray, Part 1 – Love at First Sight : (2009) Servant Tattoos

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

Crow levered the kick stand down with the heel of his boot parking the bike behind Stan’s black Suburban.  A woman waited for them just outside a white picket fence.  The small yard and two story house behind her slept under a shroud of gray.  Not the quiet gray of slumbering winter but the pale gray of death.  Dingy dust covered the white gingerbread gables.  A dirty ash sprinkled the snow, the eaves, the porch.  Dead gray clung to the curled brown leaves of the climbing roses and flowering shrubs landscaping the house.

In neighboring yards, crocuses and daffodils poked out from the remaining snow.  Their bright blooms vivid blue and yellow against the clean, white snow.  Olive’s yard had died and turned to ash.

“It’s them alright,” Stan said.  He zipped his coat, stuffed his hands in his pocket, and followed Crow up the driveway.  “Nothing beautiful ever follows in their wake.”

“I wonder what they wanted with this witch?” Crow asked.  His gaze drifted over the yard and house as he pulled off his leather gloves.  The Gray gave him the creeps.  Seven vile women with far too much power controlled by a serial killer.  Lovely.  He reached under his coat to feel the butt of one of his Glocks.  The polymer, warmed by his body heat, fitted comfortably in his hand.  He thought about taking the gun from its holster, but pulled out a cigarette and lit it instead.  The deadly smoke filled his lungs before he exhaled it out into the late morning air bright with sunlight pricking his vampire skin.

“Let’s find out,” Stan said.

The two men approached the old woman.  Crow slipped his cigarette in his mouth and rubbed his fingers.  They twitched and itched like his tattoos did sometimes – he hoped that meant Manson was nearby.  The old lady’s bun, not one of those severe, face-lift buns, but a puffy, wispy, romantic thing, made Crow shake his head.  Between that and her long lavender gown, buttoned-up dainty gray boots, and navy jeweled bag which matched her navy coat, she had the look of a much misplaced Victorian aristocrat.  He half expected her to talk with a British accent.  He never understood witches and their need to be strange.  The sun glinted on a large gilded mirror hung around her neck on a heavy chain blinding him for a moment.  He raised his arm to block the reflection.

She did not come to meet them, but waited for them to walk up the long driveway.   Their boots crunched in the dirty snow loud in the quiet street.  The lady tilted her head, like a bird, examining him.  She took in his compact frame, thick dark hair, and grizzled chin with quick darts of her small dark eyes.

“You’re the Raven?”  She made it his title.

He shrugged his shoulders, irritated.  “My name’s Crow, if that is what you mean.”

She cocked her head the other way. “Your aura is strange, twisted, caught between two worlds.”

“Hey Stan, she’s a witch all right – got the whole wispy mystic sayings down pat,” Crow whispered out of the side of his mouth loud enough for her to hear.  Manson might be nearby.  He was in no mood for the drawn out ceremonies some witches followed.

“Well, if she’s right it might explain your bad attitude.  No wonder you have that permanent chip on your shoulder, what with your soul being in a twist and all.”

“It could also explain why you’re a sarcastic jerk all the time,” Zephyr whispered from his pocket.  “And it should be noted that Stan agrees with me.”

Crow chuckled.

“My name is Rose Brickshire.”  She either had not heard them or chose to ignore their quips. “My niece, Olive Penelope Owens, has been kidnapped by the Gray.  She named you her rescuer, so it is you who must go in.”

“What?” Crow said, confused.  “In where? And why me?”

“You must go in the house.  Alone,” Rose said her eyebrows arching, ignoring his last question.

The temptation to mock the “alone” point was almost more than Crow could resist.  Instead he turned to Stan.

“Well, my faithful side-kick.  It looks like you must remain here.  If I’m not out of the haunted house in one hour, at the full moon, call the police so they can bungle my rescue.”

“You’re a real jerk, you know that right?”  Stan said.  He took his cigarette away.

Crow shook his head, clasped Stan on the back, walked past the old lady and opened the gate.  It stuck, hesitated.  A dead maple leaf, brittle and orange, blew across the yard, tumbled over the holly hedges, and across his hand.  An electric shock raced up his skin following the path of the blowing leaf.  Crow yanked back with a curse but the shock faded as fast as it came.  He grabbed the gate and shoved it open.

The world went black.

He glanced back.  Stan and Rose stood there watching him, the sun shining.  Crow could smell them, their life force.  He could hear their hearts beating.

He turned back to the house.  The yard was black, black and stormy.

“This is messed up,” Crow said.  He walked through the gate into the front yard.  Something in the back of his mind said this was the same mess as when Sophie died, when other people died, when Manson was involved.  It was all about the visions, the SoulReading which damned his family. 

In the yard, a storm raged around him.  The sky dropped buckets of water on him soaking him through.  Between the booms of thunder, Crow heard singing.  He turned his head, trying to catch the noise again.  Boom!  The thunder peeled across the sky.  Lighting tickled the underbellies of the clouds until laughing they releasing their water on the world. The voice lifted with the thunder’s drum then dropped off in its echo.  The voice reached into Crow.  It captured something inside of him.  It pulled him towards it with a sound of nature laughing and dancing.  It drove his feet with the joy of life.  It commanded him to wake up.  Wake Up!  

He shifted along the left hand side, around the wide, white wrap-around porch.

There she was.

Dancing. Dancing with the preverbal “no one is watching” type of abandon.  The rain streamed around them. Crow wiped it from his eyes.  He wanted to see her better. 

Beauty became a dull word as he watched her.  Life and joy in the living of it embodied her.  Petite but lithe, her whole body was alive with the rhythm of the storm.  Around her trees, plants, and flowers swayed in her dance.  Petals and leaves broke free to helix and swirl around her.  Her short, wet, reddish hair flowed out from her growing longer and blowing higher.

She enchanted Crow in bonds of gold . Never was the gift from his mother, the visions, more than a curse.  Death and torture were all he ever saw, until now.  Now, he had a vision of grace and bliss.  Now was life and passion.  He had lived long, for a human, and had seen beautiful women.  He had been with beautiful women, and powerful women, but Olive’s innocent dance, her joy, burned through him as none other had.  The other women had been as messed up as he was, as tortured and twisted.  This witch was different.  He tried to remember her as she had been when they met in LeVidal.   She had glared at him, angry with him for what he could not remember.  This vision pushed his memories aside.  This vision drove beauty into him like a spear to the heart.

The wind changed.

It blew down from the North pounding on his back with cold air.  Crow tensed.  This was a vision.  Any moment someone would die.  Olive would die at the hands of Manson.  This was a vision.  Crow braced himself for the inevitable.  Olive kept dancing.

“What am I not seeing Zephyr?” Crow yelled over the storm, frustrated by the vision’s taunting beauty. 

Zephyr climbed from his pocket and flew up to his shoulder her wings limp in the rain. 

“This is not one of your mother’s visions. But your heart might have just thawed, just now, for a moment.”

Crow ignored her comment.  His heart had not thawed that much.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“Go back to the front of the house.”

Crow headed back around the front porch.  The storm faded.  Crow’s clothes dried.  The sun shone on Stan and Rose where they talked in the driveway.  They stopped when they saw him.  Stan raised a questioning eyebrow and his hand hovered near his own pistol.  Crow waved him to stand down.

“What, Zeph?”  He did not see anything meaningful.

“Touch the snow.  She’s speaking to you.”

Crow bent down and scooped up a handful of dirty snow and ice.  An electrical shock flowed over his hand again.  This time he squeezed hard instead of jerking away.  Beyond, just beyond the gate, several women stood.  The storm, from the back yard, fell around them.  They stayed dry and untouched.  Without counting, Crow knew there were seven witches.

“The whole coven.”

Zephyr hissed.

The oldest crone, tall and beautiful, too beautiful, stepped forward and opened the gate.  Crow had seen her last in his mother’s death vision – Ms. Heather Gray.  She looked the same as she did the night she sat in his parents living room and conned them into a case that let them be captured by Manson.  The same as when West died, the same as when Sophie died.  The Gray had not aged in over fifty years.

“See her as Olive sees her,” Zephyr commanded him.

Crow closed his eyes and focused on the power pulsing in the handful of snow he held. When he opened his eyes the crone turned into a hag  – dirty and oozing from every pore.  Her hands were twisted claws.  Her skin shriveled on her bones and hung from her muscles.

Crow shivered. “The other may have been a lie, but at least you could look at it.”

“The truth is safer.  Even here they’re trying to trap you.”  Zephyr said.

As he watched, the seven entered the yard, walked up on the porch, and into Olive’s home.

“It took all seven of them to break in without an invitation.” 

The vision faded.  It guided him back around to the left of the house.  The storm turned to ice and snow.  The thunder silenced its drums and lightning hid her flashing lights.  Olive run, laughing, into the house grabbing her cardigan on the way. 

Crow followed her inside.  He made a note of where she left the cardigan on the wood box.  His gut told him it was important.  Olive stripped off her wet shirt.  Crow quickly turned away. His body temperature rose.  He kept his head down, waiting, not wanting to invade her privacy.  The quick glance he got gave him a look at some of her tattoos, ones he had not seen when he met her before.  A large tree covered her whole back with wide branches and a thick trunk.  All four seasons marked the tree.  Its leafy crown quartered into young spring leaves, full summer foliage, orange and brown leaves and the bare branches of winter.  Interlacing vines, leaves, and flowers – some buds and some in full bloom – covered her arms.  Images of her connections etched the center of the flowers like little framed pictures set in a beautiful garden.  Nothing marked the backs of her hands – a witch so powerful served no one.

“Humans are so funny about their bodies.  Hers is beautiful by your standard and nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not human, not ashamed and not looking.  Is she done?”

“You’re half human and yes she is.”

Crow raised his head in time to see her dash into the other room.  He tried not to notice anything about her or what little she now wore as he followed.

In the kitchen the gray light of day streamed into a cold house as the vision the snow brought faded.  A dull-green ivy sat alone in a pot, one tendril waving at him.  Crow embraced the electric shock of Olive’s vision bringing her back.  She raced through the kitchen, giggling.  Warmth flushed his skin again.  Zephyr tutted at him.

Olive led him through the dark living room, down a short hall and into a bedroom.  She flicked on the light in her room  Seven hands close around her in a circle.  She screamed as they broke her connection to her plants, her seasons, her source of magic.  Crow clenched his hands.  He knew all this had already happened, but he hated watching unable to do anything.  Olive collapsed on the floor as the Gray chanted.  She lay utterly still.

The oldest crone stepped forward breaking the circle.  Lightning fast, Olive leapt up.  She bounded for the break in power.  The old witch caught her by her short hair, yanking her back with a neck-breaking crack.  Olive hit the floor and lost consciousness.  The room turned gray.

Crow looked around.  It was a pretty room, blue and green.  But the colors, the lace, the blankets and pillows were cold and dull.  He turned to go hunt for another vision when something gleaming on the floor caught his eye.  He squatted down.  A small bunch of hair lay on the floor where the oldest crone had caught Olive and yanked her to the floor.  Crow picked them up.  They were golden blond, bold orange and brilliant white.

“Have you ever seen anyone with three colors of hair?”

“Nope.”  Zephyr held onto his ear and leaned out over his shoulder to take a look.  Her soft white wings brushed his grizzled cheek.

An electric shock, similar to the ones of the visions, filled Crow’s hand, flowing from the hair.  This time it did not stop.  His hand stretched wide, tense and taunt.  The hair glowed and burned into his skin. Crow growled, bearing his teeth.  Hs fangs extended.  He threw back his head and howled.

Everything stopped.

The hairs soak into his skin.  He turned his hands over and new tattoos appeared.  On his small fingers an ice cold star filled in below the first knuckle.

“Winter,” Zephyr whispered.

On his ring fingers a large harvest moon took up residence.

“Autumn.”

A sun blazed on his middle fingers.

“Summer.”

The tattoos stopped.  Crow turned his hands back and forth. “Now what?  Where’s spring?”

“I don’t think we are done yet,” Zephyr said.

“The cardigan…”  Crow stood up and went back through the house to the mud room.

The cardigan lay on an old wood box where Olive left it the night before.  Crow picked it up and sniffed it.  The smell of new snow, crisp leaves, thick grass and new flowers filled his head.  Here was Olive and all that she was – a heady concoction.  He turned the cardigan over and found a tiny, dead lily-of-the-valley slipped through the button hole.  Though its white bell flowers were now brown it still smelled sweet.  He touched it.

Her power flung Crow back across the small room.  He tumbled to the floor as the vision rushed away from the house, but still in the house.  It shifted painfully to another plane.  He heard the door open between reality and spirituality.

Seven women surrounded Olive.  She sat chained in a chair.  Sweat drenched her skin.  Her hair hung in lank tangles around her ears.  Crow flinched at the echoes of Sophie’s tortured death in Olive’s capture. He tried to peer into the shadows of the room for Manson or Fortunatus.

One of the younger crones back handed Olive across the mouth. 

“You will not disrespect the Mother.”  

Her sing-song voice made Crow cringe.  From the bruises on Olive’s face and upper body, this was not the first time she had been reprimanded in such a fashion.

“Let me get this straight,” Olive spat.  “You hit me for disrespecting that old hag, but you want me to take her place as one of the Gray.  Don’t you think your disrespecting the Mother by disrespecting me?”

Someone flicked a hand and Olive screamed.  Her whole body arched in pain.

“What have I told you about your attitude?” the Mother said.

“You’re the one who picked me.” Olive huffed each word. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“You’re a foolish child.  Join us or die.  Help us make something new or I will dispose of you.  I tire of this game.  You have disappointed me.”

“What??” Crow whispered.  “Join them? The Gray want Olive to join them?”

“Shhhh,” Zephyr shushed him.

“I will never, ever join you.”  Fear flashed in Olive’s green eyes but her voice was strong.

The witch with the sing-song voice stepped from the shadows.  A long knife gleamed in her hand.  Olive squeezed her eyes shut.

“Wait Dove!” commanded the Mother. “This must be done properly and with the right care!  Just cause we are with the SoulReader doesn’t mean we can kill one like her and go unnoticed.”

Dove, with her sing-song voice, lowered the knife and reached out to touch the curve of Olive’s face.  Olive jerked away.

“We will make it look like an accident.”

The vision faded.

Crow lay on the floor staring up at a textured white ceiling.  Pain flared in his index fingers and died.  He raised his hands to see the new tattoos.  Rain drops.

“Imagine that.”

“Spring,” Zephyr said.

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray: Death and Silence (1983)

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

1983

The Draught, Manhunter McGee’s bar, stank of blood and death.  Crow ignored the humans chained in chairs overhead with IV’s draining and mixing their blood for vampires to drink.  Orion sat in a corner her entourage gathered protectively her.  That relationship was over.  No matter how hard he tried, Crow could not view humans as cattle.  He did not drink their blood even with Draughts far-flung reputation for drinks rich in magic, drugs and despair.  He ate raw meat if he needed blood.  He did not drink human unless he had to to live, and those moments of necessity were rare.  Crow did not drink.  But Crow did not rescue either.  He did not protect.  His failure in one area of his life served as an excuse to fail in other areas as well.  Why should he rescue them?  Something else would just get them, on this plane or the other.  Besides, LeVidal and Draughts was not the place to rescue humans.  Everyone knew that.  Crow learned it the hard way a few months ago.  Orion had insisted he try the blood of a pale man in a small chair.  Crow had knocked back a shot of blood infused with vodka, guilt and remorse.  Like he did not have enough of that on his own, he had to taste someone else’s?  Manhunter threw him out after he staked two vampires.

Two days later, the crazy bartender had offered him a job.

“Crow, you seemed to have a knack for getting into fights almost every time you come in the Draught.  You win them without staking anyone unless you drink blood.  I will provide all the drink and meat you need, women and clothing, if you will provide the entertainment.”

“You think I want to entertain your silken customers?” Crow had coughed in his drink.  That was that.

Tonight, Crow drank scotch on the rocks, no blood.   Orion ignored him and he ignored her.  Crow let the amber-colored alcohol consume his line of sight until the world turned brown and warm.  His head swam…

Stan sweated through his white shirt.  A large gash cut through the old scars on his chest from the day Sophie died twelve years ago.  A familiar face surfaced in Crow’s mind.  An all too familiar dread, the kind which haunted even the most drug induced sleep, crawled up his spine.  Manson.  Silent for twelve years.  A waiting spider.  Old boots, plastic limbs and stained, worn braces floated behind Manson.  Plaster hands, parts of bodies once broken but believed healed lined the messy shelves around him.  A dusty, chipped statue of the Virgin Mary sat off to the side, her hands held up a saucer filled with glass eyes.  From a barred window stuck a small crucifix.  It jutted from the window as a witness to Manson’s cruelty… 

Crow stumbled out of the Draught and vomited on the cobblestone streets of the LeVidal.  Sweat broke out on his forehead.  His heart hammered.  This time…this time he would not fail…he would not fail…he would not fail.  Would another person die because he could not get there in time?

“No,” Crow groaned to himself.  This one time he would not let Manson win.  Zephyr fluttered out the door as a group of vampires shifted out.  They tripped over Crow doubled up in the path.  Swears rained down on him.  Crow yanked a stake from his belt, shifted up, and drove it through the chest of the closest vampire.  The other one shifted away, but Crow caught her by the hair.  He ran the stake up through her back and out her chest.  Dust filtered down around his hands.  The others scattered.  Crow snarled….

“Saint Roch.  Saint Roch,” Stan screamed over and over as Manson added new lines to his scared chest…

Picking himself up off the street, Crow scented right then left.

“What happened?”  Zephyr hovered over him.  Her white moth wings and the pom-pom tips of her antenna glowed in the eternal night of LeVidal.

“He has Stan. He has him and I am gonna get him.  Are you coming?”

“Someone has to keep you out of too much trouble,” she said landing on his shoulder and holding onto his ear.  Crow caught the scent of the Door he wanted and shifted across LeVidal moving fast even for most vampires.  His father had been exceptionally fast.  Crow took full advantage of the speed he had inherited.

“How do you know where Stan is?” Zephyr hissed in his ear as he raced along.

“Stan’s screaming it while Manson tortures him.”

Crow halted at the damp Door which led out of LeVidal within the Spiritual Plane and into New Orleans on the Material Plane.

“It’s a trap then?” Zephyr sounded unconcerned.

“With Manson it’s always a trap.”

…Manson bent over Stan, his favorite scalpel in hand, and laughed as Stan clenched his teeth.

“Not going to beg like your friends?”

Stan clamped his lips together.

“Or maybe you should just keep yelling your location to see if that friend of yours shows up.”

“He will.” Stan starred the sadistic killer in the eye.

“He didn’t come for his own mother, what makes you think he’ll come for you? Come on  Indulge me. Scream just a little.  Beg.”

Gray hairs peppered Stan’s head.  Tired lines crisscrossed his face, but he had lived long enough to not beg for mercy.  He had seen everything Manson was capable of, and he had stayed out of his reach for twenty-eight years.  He would not beg.

Crow tossed his head as he exited the vision and kept moving.  He might not rescue those people feeding vampires.  He might not have saved anyone in his family, but he would not be damned with Stan’s death.  This time he wanted Manson.  No one would stop him.  He was not a baby.  He was not a child.  This time Manson would find out just what kind of monster he had created.  Crow shifted out of the permanent dark of LeVidal, through the glimmering Door between one reality and another, and into the bright sunlight of noisy, smelly, wild New Orleans.  The two cities sat on the same magical lines for the same reasons, mirroring one another in their parties, peoples, and frivolity.  Crow stumbled a few steps as his vampire eyes adjusted with the help of his human blood to the sunlight of the summer day.  Using both sight and smell, Crow gained his bearings and raced down the hot, humid streets of New Orleans.  Tourists and thieves mixed and mingled with the general populace.  The smell of gumbo and the sound of jazz danced through the air no matter which direction he turned.  The shimmers in the air whispered of dark magic.

At the corner of Saint Roch Avenue and North Derbigny, with old homes, rubble and live oaks on his left, and the white washed walls of the above ground tombs on his right, Crow stopped his race to Manson.  He hesitated.  Failure had dogged his every waking moment since Manson killed his mother.  His inability to save the person who had given him life, whose love he had felt so strongly for the first bewildering, fearful days of his life, tore at him moment by moment.  He would not fail Stan.  Not now.  Not so close.

Crow leaned against a telephone pole and examined the quiet street.  His long black duster hung limp around his ankle.  No wind stirred it.  Cars sat in the sun, hot and waiting for their drivers.   Windows on the homes to his left  hoped for a breeze.  Not a person was in sight.  Work or heat drove them off the streets.   He did not smell assassins, vampires, or witches, but he never believed Manson worked alone.  Fear-bound slaves gratified his need for power. Zephyr flew across the street and landed on the white washed wall of Saint Roch’s cemetery.   Her spotted shoulders shivered despite the heat.

“It’s cold over there,” she said glancing in at the above ground tombs carved with names, dates and memories.

Crow walked along the wall dragging his fingers across the white bricks.  He could feel, smell, and sense the death housed within the walls, kept inside, away from the living which surrounded it.

Two statues and an arch opened the path so the living could visit the dead.  Crow stepped through it without a glance up at the guardians of stone.  The smell of fear and Manson permeated the cobbled grounds.  Crow followed the scent towards a small building littered with small papers, roaches, and flowers.  The cobblestones held notes of thanksgiving inscribed on them to the patron Saint that had healed so many.  In another life Crow might have been interested enough to discover the source of magic behind the healings, but today he focused on one thing.

Manson and Fortunatus stood on either side of a kneeling, bleeding Stan just inside the small chapel filled with emblems of healed deformities.

“Why took you so long?” Stan wheezed lifting his head just enough to stare at Crow from under his sweat soaked hair.

“Ahhh,” Manson sighed like some soft fall breeze had just found its way into the heat of the day.  “I am glad he did Stan, so very glad he did.”

Crow paused.  He faced, across a simple chapel threshold, the man who had destroyed his life.  It was odd to see him in the flesh, when Crow had only glimpsed him through the tortured eyes of others.  Yet here he stood, flesh and blood, his favorite scalpel in his hand and his other resting, friendly-like, on Stan’s shoulder.  Fortunatus’ fangs had protruded and his hands had turned to talons which broke the skin and drew blood from where he gripped Stan’s other shoulder.  The heat of the sun turned Fortunatus’ skin gray and ashy as he stood just inside a dark square of shade.

“Decided to leave your gray Ladies behind today?” Crow asked with a quick glance around.

“No, no I assure you they are present.  Don’t you sense their magic?” Manson said with a jeering smile.

Crow casually scratched his head getting sight of Zephyr out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t so much sense their magic as smell them.  The corpses smell fresher.”

“That is a low and childish comment, Dhampir,” Fortunatus said.  “I am ashamed of you.”

“Fine by me.”

And Crow disappeared.  No more bantering words.  Crow leapt up, grabbed the shallow indention of the crossing spars on the front of the chapel, avoided the cross at the spars center, and vaulted up onto the high, false fronted roof.  Fortunatus could not follow him out here into the sunlight.  Crow use that to his advantage.  Zephyr hovered up to him.  He nodded at her.  Leaping up, he went over the roof to the left.   His hand grazed the empty cross at its steeple.  He swore as it burned his skin, but did not stop.  Using the momentum of swinging from the roof, he launched himself down and through the bar covered window of the chapel.  Zephyr fluttered into the opposite one and exploded in a ball of glorious sunshine.

Fortunatus, braced to face Crow, fell back from Zephyr’s light flooding the chapel.  Crow pulled twin Glocks from holsters under his arms and fired at the vampire as he shifted past.  Dropping his guns, Crow grabbed Stan under the arms, and hurled him out of the chapel.  In one smooth motion, he turned and barreled into Manson.

Making physical contact, feeling the wind rush out of the lungs of the man who killed his parents and his friends, gave Crow a sick joy.  Ceramic limbs and crutches showered down on them as Crow smashed Manson into a wall.  Manson brought his scalpel up and drove it between Crow’s ribs.  Crow rolled onto it and off of Manson, trapping Manson’s armed hand beneath him.

Zephyr’s light went out. Shadows too dark for the day claimed the tiny chapel of healed limbs.   Dried leather, buckles, and fingers broke under Fortunatus as he shifted up off the floor.  Manson tried to move his hand.  Crow drove his fist into Manson’s sternum.  The remaining air inside him whooshed out.  Crow raised his fist rewarded with a look of pain in Manson’s cold eyes.

“A little darkness…nice touch,” Crow mocked Manson as he punched him again and again in the chest.  Manson’s eyes rolled up into his head.   Crow lifted his arm to pummel his pretty face.   Fortunatus caught his fist, and yanked him up.  Crow ripped the scalpel from his side and drove it towards Fortunatus’ chest.  Fear in the eyes of the ones he hated was more intoxicating than all the blood-laced drinks in the world.  Crow’s head throbbed.  He drove the piece of sharp metal into Fortunatus’ chest ready to watch him finally turn to ash.  Fortunatus struck his hand away before the scalpel could pierce his heart.  The vampire stumbled back.  Crow pressed the advantage pulling his extra Glock from his back holster.

His finger pulled against the familiar weight.   Manson stumbled to his feet.

“I kept your mother’s tattoos.  Hung them in a frame after I dried them out.”

Crow spun around with a growl and fired all ten shots without stopping.

The sulfuric smoke cleared.

Manson still stood.

Two of the bullets had hit home, one in his gut and one in his thigh.  He shouted.  Sunlight, normal, late in the day sunlight streamed into the chapel.  Crow hissed, shielding his eyes with his hand.

Manson, Fortunatus and the darkness were gone.  A splatter of blood amongst the notes, figurines, and roach carcasses were all that remained of Crow’s enemy.  He could not even be sure the blood was Manson and not just Stan’s.

Crow cursed the air around him until he was hoarse.  He hoped to bring his enemy back with his insults and taunts.  Zephyr begged him to come and tend to Stan.  She begged him to leave before someone called the police.  Manson, Fortunatus and the Gray were gone again.  They slipped through Crow’s fingers before he could avenge all the ones they had killed.  Crow hated himself for the life they still lived.  He had been so close.

Crow stumbled from the chapel and dropped down by Stan.

“Why? Why could I save you and not her?  Why?”

Stan grabbed his shoulder where the list of names etched his skin.  They both knew Manson would not kill Stan.  They had always known he would murder Sophie.

As the sun set, Crow helped his old wounded friend out of the cemetery.  He took him to the hospital in New Orleans furthest away from the cemetery and from the magic pulsing around LeVidal.  Manson had found Stan.  Manson would find him again if he wanted, but this time Crow would be at Stan’s side.  Manson would not find Stan so easy to catch the next time.

When the doctor finished stitching up Stan’s wounds, Crow took him and Zephyr and left New Orleans.  They drove far, far away.  Stan healed and relearn to sleep through the night.

—

Whispers and visions of murders plagued Crow for years.  With Stan’s help, Crow learned to use the visions to help the law enforcement agents who hunted the killers with only their normal human powers.  Crow scouted out clubs and vampire feeding grounds.  He hoped he would bump up against Fortunatus one night.  While he helped slow vampire feedings, he did not see the vampire who served Manson.

Fifty years had passed since the witch Manson found out his echo existed in the fall of 1959.  Three times he attempted to regain his broken powers and failed.  The echo’s son was ready to find him.  The echo’s son was ready to avenge her, but Manson was silent as the graves he had filled waiting as their terror built.

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray: The Death of Sophie (1975)

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

1975

Crow’s shaggy head flew up.  He glanced around the quiet library.  The sounds of flipping of pages, the dull thump of books set back on the shelf, whispers, and the heater filling the large book-lined room with warm air washed over him.  His heart’s steady tempo increased.  He hated driving though Texas.  He hated stopping this close to Dorian, but nothing in the library seemed out of order.  Why the sudden fear?  He brushed aside his ever disheveled hair.  The long sleeves of his turtleneck hid his tattoos, but he could not hide his strange gray and violet eyes.  He could not hide the haunted anger which burned in them.  Only his frail mother, Sophie, ever drove it from him with a rare smile.  A bag sat next to his chair.  Flowers and several books peeked out of the top.  He hoped to tempt one of her smiles with them.

Sophie groaned trapped in a small dark space.

He sat still…eyes closed, not breathing, his heart stopped beating…no indication he was even alive.  Crow waited on the precipice of dread.  He had feared and avoided this vision for sixteen long, broken years.  He had given up on anything resembling a normal childhood before he was born to keep this vision from ever being seen.  He had fought alongside Stan for sixteen years to escape this one vision, this inherited echo of another witch’s power.

Someone pale picked Sophie up and dragged her into a dark, shadowed warehouse.  A chair with chains surrounded by seven women swam into view.

Crow shrieked.  His eyes flew open and he found himself on the floor.  A group of women in long skirts and boring shoes stood around him.  Zephyr, the tiny, moth-like, wiznit called his name from his pocket.  Crow threw caution to the wind.  He shifted – leaping to his feet, springing over the women, and racing out the door, an all in one, to-humans-invisible move out of the library.  In broad daylight, he shifted down the crowded street of a city he did not know heading for a hotel which was not his home.  He begged and pleaded and bargained with God that this vision was a trap and not true.  As he passed through the streets, ignoring the ignorant humans who turned to look for the passing shadow, the image at the edge of their vision, his teeth elongated and his hands molded into powerful talons.

Resigned, Sophie slumped in the chair as Fortunatus clamped cold chains around her.  She did not look up at Mrs. Heather Gray, the Mother of the Coven, while the witch cast a spell around them to shield them from outside interruption.  Only when Manson himself appeared did she show any emotion. 

“Just end it please,” she said to the murderer of her dearest friends and her dearest love. “Just end it.”

Manson laughed. “I have every intention to do just that.”

Crow screamed as he picked himself up from the ground again.  The scrapes on his face and hands from hitting the pavement at such a high speed healed.  He shifted into their hotel and up to their room.  A medley of southwest colors and images of wolves and Indians flashed by him as he appeared and disappeared into each bedroom calling her name.  They were empty.

Anguish clamped down on Crow’s heart.  He dropped to his knees clutching his head in his hands.  How could she just give up?  How could she let herself be taken after they had spent so long running and hiding?  How could she ask him to end it when he had ended so much?  Why would she do this?  Why would she leave him?  Why had Stan let her be taken?  He was supposed to watch out for her.  Crow stumbled to his feet only to fall against the coffee table as images swirled uninterrupted around him.  He fixed on Sophie’s lingering scent and shifted to the door.  He would rescue his mother.  Stan staggered in, a large gash in his forehead.

“He came so fast …” He stopped, his eyes traveling over Crow’s face.  Crow heard Stan’s heart pound.  Blood sped through his veins prepared to do something in response to the fear filling him.

“Crow?” Stan asked.

“He has her!”  Crow shifted past his friend only to be brought up short.  Stan blocked his path.

“You can’t go. It’s a trap.  He wants us all.  He knows if he has her we’ll come.”

“Damn right!” Crow shifted again, but Stan, Stan who had raised him, trained him, and kept him safe, anticipated him and slammed the door shut.  Crow reeled back as a knife cut slowly into the tattoo on Sophie’s back.

“I’m going to take back from you all you have taken from me,” Manson said.

The blade slice through her muscle.  Manson took his time, slow agonizing time.  Tears spilled from her eyes and she screamed…screamed Benj’s name. 

Crow beat against her soul.  He tried to force himself out of the Reading and into Reality.  Sophie caught him and pulled him close to her heart, into her inner self.  Crow sat with her in a green forest fading to nothing.  Her green forest, her inner soul, her place of truth, faded to a dull gray and then disappeared just like the red eyes which haunted it had sixteen years ago.  She pulled Crow close to her.

“Let me go.”

Crow lashed out.  His clawed hands tore open Stan’s chest.  Stan clutched at the wounds.  Warm blood spilled over his fingers.  Zephyr leapt from Crow’s pocket taking to the air.

“Crow, stop,” she wailed.

Filled with flashing images of Manson removing his mother’s tattoos with a bloody scalpel, Crow could not stop.  He slashed at Stan again opening the muscles across his chest as he shredded Stan’s shirt. Blood splattered Crow.  Stan blubbered in pain.  He tumbled to the floor.  The tan carpet turned red with his blood.  Crow reached for the door knob, but Stan grasped his pant leg in one last effort to stop him.  With a vicious slash, Crow flayed open his upper arm and back rendering Stan useless.

Manson ripped Sophie’s shirt open and signaled to Fortunatus who twisted her head back.  Sweat rolled down her face mixing with her tears as Manson cut into her chest.  The tattoo covering her mirrored the one on Manson’s own chest.  He would not share.  Sophie looked into his eyes and saw mad lust, anger, and envy. 

“I will not have my power paired with such a weak being as you,” he whispered in her ear. “I will punish you for taking it, for stealing my souls, for escaping me all these years, though I have had fun with all my serial killers, my pets.  But now I will be complete in my power.”

Sophie blinked.  Sweat burned her eyes.  Half whispered visions had plagued Crow’s dreams off and on his whole life.  They were Manson’s doing. Sophie no longer shared Manson’s power.  Her tattoos had faded.  Pain danced through her. She could no longer hear her own thoughts or her own screaming.  Crow, Benj, Crow, Benj – their images strobed in her mind, overlapped, but she could not sense either anymore.  She was alone with Manson.  Alone at the end just like Guinness, West, and JC.

Sensing and seeing his mother’s torture, Crow yanked the door out of its frame in his panic.  Bullets punched into the muscle of his upper chest and abdomen.  He grunted with each shot.  Men with guns sprouted from the hallway floor.  Dressed in dull gray and brown suits, each could blend in with a crowd without a glance.  Only the guns in their hands made them stand out.

Crow welcomed the fight with a barbaric battle cry.  He shifted down the hall only to stumble as a new image yanked him from the hotel to the woman in chains her blood seeping into the concrete floor.  Manson held up large sections of tattooed skin, showing it off like a child with a finished drawing.  Vomit filled Crow’s mouth.  He returned to the hotel hallway in time to looked up into the black mouth of a .357 magnum.  Before the assassin could fire, Crow grabbed the barrel, yanked the gun from his hands, and flung it down the hall.  The assassin stared at him.  Crow shifted to his feet.  He grabbed the man by the neck and shoulder and body slammed him into the wall.  Taking hold of one leg, Crow spun him in a large arch and through him down the hall towards the other assassins.  He shifted after the flying body.  Bullets hit him in the chest, arms, gut and legs, but he ignored them.

Coming up on the other assassin, Crow grabbed him around the neck and squeezed.  With a pop the man’s neck broke.  He crumpled to the floor.  Crow turned on the last two assassins.  Something grabbed him from behind.  A heavily cloaked vampire about the same age as Crow but taller pressed down on Crow’s throat with an arm like an iron bar.  Crow stopped breathing.  He grabbed the vampire’s arm and twisted it like a dried out branch.

The vampire stumbled back cradling his fractured arm.  Bones stuck out of his ashen skin.  He smiled at Crow and licked his lips as the bones re-knit together.

“Your mother is not so lucky as I,” the vampire said.

Crow kicked him in the head.  The vampire’s jaw smashed up into his brain.  Crow grabbed his head and yanked it off.  The vampire turned to dust.

Sophie could not breathe.  Her chest rose and fell.  The bleeding muscles tried to work, but she could not take in any air.  The room spun.  Sophie stepped into darkness.  Something pricked her arm.

“You will not escape me so fast,” Manson said.

An I.V. dangled from the muscle of her arm.  Manson held up a large cigar cutter.  Making sure he had her full attention, he took her hand in his and slipped it gently around her finger.  Sophie screamed.

A berserker rage charged through Crow.  His mother’s screams echoed back and forth in his head.  Her pain filled his body, and her terror filled his heart.  He lashed out at all in his path. The assassins stumbled back, but he reached them faster than they could flee and ripped them limb from limb.  Blood splashed the hotel walls as Sophie’s blood bathed Manson and Fortunatus.  Crow’s soul shredded as Sophie’s pain and horror tore her apart.

With no Benj, no connection, no feeling, no belonging, Sophie pleaded for a swift death.  Manson did not grant her request.  He rent her body with pleasure.  He cut, crushed, and maimed her as he had no other.  Crow watched it all.  He watched the inner soul of his mother fade, broken and destroyed.  He listened to her beg for the man who had loved her and lusted for another.  He screamed with her in the bloody hallway of a hotel.  No one came to gather Sophie’s torn soul.  No one surrounded Sophie with love at the end.  She died alone. 

Manson tilted his head and licked a fleck of blood off his lip.

“She is no longer my echo…he is.”

Crow found himself in an unfamiliar hallway, sticky with blood and bile.  His mother’s soul floated away like a thin gossamer shade passing into complete darkness.  When Manson brought death there was no hope with its coming.

Silently, Crow stumbled to the hotel room.  Zephyr climb back in his pocket.  She watched him with wide dark eyes.  Her white, soft wings hung wilted behind her.  Tears sparkled on her spotted cheeks.  From his pocket he took a large ruby, something from Benj’s fortune, and placed it on the coffee table.  He scribbled a quick note of apology to the hotel owner for the death and mayhem.  Stan groaned from the doorway.  Crow shifted to his side and gathered up his dying friend.

“Is she?” Stan gasped.

Crow nodded, unable to bring the words out into the open.  Unable to believe he had failed his mother, failed his father, failed everyone already slain by Manson.

Stan’s eyes rolled back.  He slumped into unconsciousness.  Without a glance back at the room, leaving all their gear behind, leaving the hallway covered in blood, bodies and ash, Crow the Dhampir, took to the paths of the magical and left the human world behind.  He left Texas with its damned town of Dorian behind.

Across the nation a new horror whispered, a new type of killer seeped into the country’s consciousness.  Manson went silent with the new information that while he had caught and killed Sophie, her powers belonged to her son. Manson was still incomplete.  His coven, Fortunatus, his vampires, and assassins went silent.  But the murders committed by his protégés followed loudly behind him weeping blood.

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray, Prolouge: Part 13 (1959)

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

Benj turned to the Beares.  Mrs. Beare flinched as he shifted to her.

“Look into my eyes, Mrs. Beare,” Benj said, sitting down next to her on the sofa.

“No! No! Never look in a vampire’s eyes!” Sophie wanted to scream, but she did not.  Their son kicked in her womb.  He fought against what his father gave into as Benj pulled down the ice bars holding back his inner beast.  Sophie sensed Benj take Mrs. Beare at the same moment her son flinched.  Benj took her to his secret place.  The place in his mind where they had danced, where they heard their child’s heart beat for the first time.  He drew Mrs. Beare close just as he had once brought Sophie close.  His desire mirrored the attraction Sophie often experienced.  Tears slipped down her face.

How dare he take her there? 

He must. 

Both thoughts flooded her heart and mind.

Someone slipped a warm hand over her shoulder.  Sophie looked up.  Stan stood beside her.  He smiled a half smile, a sad smile.  Sophie grasped his hand like a life line in a violent sea.  A warm human hand to hold while the cold hand she loved held another.  Her son ordered her to look away. Look back at Stan.  Look anywhere.  But Sophie could not obey.

Her vampire took Mrs. Beare’s head in his white hand.  He turned her just enough to expose her neck.  With one arm around her back, he bent over as he moved her against himself.  Benjamin sank his teeth into her white skin and drank deep of her blood.  His lust spread it’s wings over the sea of ice inside him.  He allowed the darkness to fly free and unfettered.  He give himself to it.

Sophie’s son scream deep inside her.

Benj jerked free with a gasp.  He tumbled off the sofa in his hurry to get away.

“Go!”  He waved at Morry.  “Go!”

Morry hustled the Beares out the door, both the men supporting a dazed and fainting Mrs. Beare.  Benj cupped his head in his hands. “God forgive me…”

Sophie heard the front door close behind them, but Mrs. Beare’s essence remained.  She remained in the room and Benj wanted her, wanted her blood, wanted her body, wanted her dying in his arms.

“Sophie,” Benj called her.

The world slowed as he climbed to his feet.  Everything moved one century long moment after moment.  The window framed him against the night, a vampire in his true glory.  The moon shown on him and Benj grew taller.  He wrapped fear and hopelessness around him like a cloak.  His eyes glowed red in the darkness.

“Sophie,” he called to her again.  His voice echoed in her ears and in her mind.

She came to her vampire.  She came at his call with no ability or desire to do otherwise.

He took her.  He covered her in his darkness.

Benj bent her  back supporting her with one arm.  He brushed her gray hair back from her face and trailed his fingers down her cheek to her white neck.  His lips, warm and full, touched her skin.  A frightened chill ran up her spine and danced over her.  She trembled in his arms.  Benj sank his teeth deep into her vein.  Sophie gasped.  She felt him.   His full concentration of blood lust crashed down upon her.  He wholly succumbed to its seductive song.  Benj no longer existed.  Benjamin drained her, taking her blood.  Her child, their child, rested at the bottom of her womb.  He cried out at the monster attacking his mother.  Sophie faded into Benj.  She forgot her love.  She forgot her child, Cora, everything, overcome by his powerful desire.  Her world turned red.

“Get her away from me,” he groaned.

Gentle hands set her down.  Sophie smiled up at the kind face.

“Son?” Sophie whispered hoping she had been given a chance to see him again, to calm his fears, and chase away his nightmares.

“Nope.  I’m Stan.  Remember?”

Reality collapsed onto her.  Sophie sat up on the threadbare sofa.  Stan and Jack backed up.

“Benj!” She tried to leap up, but her limbs would not respond.  Lifeless and dumb, they lay on the floral cushion.

“Don’t try to move,” Stan said.

“Drink this.” Jack handed her a glass of grape juice.

Sophie gulped it down and held the glass for more.  Her link to Benj flared to life.  Dear Benj.  Almost at the breaking point, so overcome with lust for the blood of two women.  He hated the lust.  He wanted  more.  He wanted all their life in himself.  He hated himself.  He had betrayed the woman he loved most in the world.

Mixed with all the raging emotions fluttered a tiny, throbbing hate.  It came from their son.  Sophie put her hands around her womb.

“What have you done?” she yelled, terrified.

Benj shifted from some personal hellhole to her side in an instant.  He put his hand on her womb afraid for his son’s life.  The hatred flared.

“No! No! He did it for me!”  Sophie sobbed.

“What’s going on?” Stan asked, ready to dash for a doctor, not that a doctor would be much help.

Sophie dropped her head back.  Sweat broke out all over her body.  Heat chased chills up and down her body.

“My son hates me.  He sensed my lust and he thinks I have betrayed Sophie.  He does not understand,” Benj spoke each word calmly and succinctly, but his heart broke as his family slipped from his fingers.  Sophie tried to swallow the wail before it escaped her lips.  She bit down on her tongue until it came out a muttered moan.

“Give us three hours and then we will finish this one way or the other,” Benj said to Stan as he scooped up Sophie and shifted back to their room.  He laid a blanket over her and tucked it in around her.

“Sleep my dearest love. We have a long battle before us.”

Benj sat on the floor by her head  with his back against the wall.  He watched while Sophie slept.  Even with her eyes closed, her heart closed, her mind closed, even in her dreams, two red eyes glowed in her darkness.

Sophie called to Cora and the young girl appeared before the veil.  Only a few hours remained of the night.  Even now the power of the sun reached golden fingers into the darkness, expelling it.

“Ready?” Sophie asked.

“Are you?” Cora said.

“No, but we can’t wait any longer.”

Cora reached out and her hands filled with blood.  Sophie raised her own hands, and watched her palms fill.  Benj shifted between them.

Sophie closed her eyes to the world and opened them in her inner soul, her core.  Cora and Benj, now just a wisp of a shade, joined her in her forest.  Sophie sighed.  Benj had never been given corporeal form in her forest.  If only she could take his hand and walk beneath the branches with him.  If only they had time.

“You look like you did when we met,” Benj touched a brown curl hanging in her face.  Sophie reached up to take his hand but her fingers slipped through his incorporealness.

“Our son is here.”  Benj faced the forest.

“He’s usually in there with you.”  She pointed to the dark spot in her woods where two red eyes had once watched over her.  Now they were gone. “He’s alone in there.”

Benj hung his head.  Sorrow welled up inside Sophie.  Why had she made him do this? Why had they been made to do this? Torn apart before they even got to be together.  She feared her ability to continue in this world sundered from her husband and her son.

“Let’s roll,” she said to keep the deep scarring of her fate at bay.

In unison, Cora and Sophie both reached through Benj’s shade and clasped hands.  Far away the doorway of a ruined soul flared and a line appeared between them.  Power like the magic of midnight soared through them.  Sophie threw back her head and laughed.  The two adventuring sisters raced towards the door, hand in hand….

….everything went dark….

Sophie saw Manson.  He spoke with someone, but this time things were different. This time Sophie controlled the vision.  She chose to come here.  Pews, rows and rows of them waited in two lines in a large room.  Stained glass windows – saints and sinners trapped in glass – dark now, slept and waited for the risen sun to bring them to life.  Manson stood by the pulpit but over his head ranged scaffolding and clear tarps.  Buckets, tools and wood sat haphazardly throughout the front of the sanctuary.  A vaguely familiar shaped darkness in the shadows spoke with Manson.

She pulled out of the vision not wanting him to know she had a link…

Like smashing into a brick wall in a full out run, Sophie crashed back into her body.  Benj caught her as she fell to the floor.  Sophie flinched at his touch.  She sensed his love and worry, but it was laced with him scenting for her blood.

“I am sorry.”  He set her down on the sofa and stepped back.  Her discomfort saddened him, but what choice did they have?

“Space between us does not weaken our link,” Sophie reminded him gently.

“Did it work?” Stan pulled up a chair and sat down giving Benj a reproving glance.

Sophie almost laughed but Benj’s pain kept her silent.  She held her hand out to him.  He shifted to her side, and she pulled him down onto the sofa.  The lust grew.  His love remained, constant as always, but as he sat down, Sophie sensed him smelling her.  She sensed the dark place in his soul, no longer trapped.  It had conquered the icy land of his core, and gave full reign to lust, want, and murder.  Benj fought against it, one small, brave light against a towering darkness.  Sophie shuddered but did not let go of Benj’s hand.  She focused on his love and held herself there.  The light inside grew.

Their son protested, and pushed his father away.

Sophie wrapped her free hand around herself, divided between the weak light in Benj and the flaming hatred of their son.  She could not quench the one while she fed the other.

“Manson is in a church building with stained glass windows,” Sophie said wanting this all to end.

The three men looked at her.

“Anything else?” Stan asked.

“It’s under construction.” Sophie added.

“That could be anywhere.”  Jack slumped in his chair.

“I know where he is.  Cora and I are still linked.  I just wanted to be careful,” Sophie explained.

“St. Jude’s,” Stan said.

“Excuse you?” Benj said.

“St. Jude’s is being remodeled.  There was a fire there last year.  Three children were killed.  I wrote several articles about it then and one last week about the remodel.  It’s not far from the trap house.”

“Let’s go,” Jack said.

“Someone was with him there.  I couldn’t see him.”

“It could be one of the Gray or it could be a vampire.  Fortunatus said some might join with him.  I saw evidence of him catching some vampires’ notice, but I do not think it is another vampire.  To us, Manson is only a young witch, an evil pet.  He will have to become more powerful for many vampires to take note.  It will be one of the Gray,” Benj said.

“Wait just a second,” Sophie said.  She cocked her head as Cora spoke to her from before the veil.

“Benj.  Take me with you.  Cora and I are going to keep Manson busy while you’re on your way.”

“Is that a good idea?” Benj asked.

Sophie sat up and kissed his cheek.  “I have your body with our blood flowing in it and that has made the link strong.  You saw me as I am in the spirit.  I’ll be fine.”

Benj picked her up.  A sharp desire for the warmth in her, and the smell and feel of Mrs. Beare’s blood washed through him again.  Their son reared up.  Sophie screamed in pain.  Benj set her down, confusion and heartache rolling off him in almost visible waves.

“Peace, my son.”  He held out his hand over Sophie’s womb.

She gasped as their unborn child fought to escape her womb to get to Benj.

“He hates you,” she whispered.

She clutched Benj’s hand holding it close to her face and kissing it with the hope of convincing their unborn child to love his father.  But Benj could no more dispel his lust than Sophie could remove the twisting in the pit of her stomach as Mrs. Beare kept bubbling to the surface of his feelings.  He wanted them both.  He wanted their life force flowing through him.  He shouted at the darkness attempting to hold onto his love for Sophie and rid himself of lust.  He turned pleading blood shot, haunted eyes on Stan.

“You get Sophie.”

He disappeared.

“No!” Sophie yelled reaching out.  Stan helped her up and followed Jack out to the car.

“Where did he go?” Stan asked as he held her arm to help her into the car.

“He went after Manson.”

Without another word, Sophie slipped into her forest.  Cora waited for her armed and ready.  The two joined hands and charged through the ethereal space between souls right to the door of Manson’s castle in his inner core.  It crashed open under their combined force.

Sophie drew her pistols.

“Manson!”

Her voice echoed through the black empty chambers of his soul.  She followed the rebounding noise into a giant room with a throne squatting in the center, a throne of ruined, torn, tortured souls.  For the first time since meeting him, Sophie watched Manson stumble.  He fell back from his chair startled at their attack.

“How did you…?”

She raced for him, pistols raised.  Behind her Cora fired bullet after bullet from a silver derringer.  Sophie aimed the noses of her guns in his face and fired.  Manson raised his arm to protect himself.  Bullets sliced through it with a sickening hack.  It chewed through flesh and bone.  Manson screamed in pain, clutching for the broken parts.  Sophie fired with her other gun.  The bullets ate away his arm and  left only the stump.  He stumbled to the back wall of the chamber.

“You bitch! How could you?  You damn bitch!”

He called to his hall.  Axes and blades flew from the wall.  Sophie ducked, narrowly missing a blood-stained axe only to have to jump up to avoid a curved knife hacking at her feet.  Her pistols elongated into two strong shotguns.  Sophie grabbed the barrel and batted a scalpel across the room.  Blades and chains flew through the air.  Sophie and Cora stood back to back fighting against Manson’s soul.

The whirlwind of blades stopped.

Far away, along the line which bound her, true terror flowed.  The terror made all she had suffered the last few days pale in comparison.  In her distraction, a butcher knife plunged into her shoulder.  It drove her from the hall.

Sophie opened her eyes and oh, how she wished she had kept them shut.  Stan held her up, his left arm around her waist, her right arm over his shoulder.  He held his gun in his right hand.  Jack laid at her feet.  His life’s blood pooled around them rushing from a gaping wound where his neck had been ripped out.

“Jack?” She whispered unable to understand what she saw.

Stan’s gun aimed across the room.  Sophie followed its black nose.   A vampire with glowing red eyes held Benj in an unbreakable head lock.  Wounds covered his body.  An engraved silver collar clasped his long white neck.

“Sophie,” Benj called to her.

Love, pure love laced only with sorrow flowed from him untainted with lust and desire for another woman.  The darkness inside him had lost.  Benj sagged.  His feet gave out from under him, exhausted.  Sophie’s blood ran over the flagstones of the church, not in him.  The many wounds covering his body did not heal.   Manson stood next to him returning to his body from their battle.  He face paled as blood poured from his arm.  He had not lost it, like inside his soul, but a vicious gash cut across the muscle.  His blood joined Benj’s and Jack’s on the floor of the empty church building.

“I could have killed him,” Sophie whispered, her horror building. “I could have killed him.”

“You have met Fortunatus I see,” Manson gasped each word from between clenched teeth, indicated the vampire holding Benj.  Fortunatus stepped fully out of the darkness.  Sophie recognized the shadow she had seen in her vision.  Bile rose in her throat.

“You!” Stan said, his fingers tightening on the grip of his .357.

“Quite a fight,” Manson said. “I didn’t see that coming.  But you didn’t see this.”

He pulled a stake from his belt with a bloody hand and lunged with all his might at Benj.  He drove it deep into the saved vampire’s heart.  Benj’s eyes flew wide.  He looked past Manson at Sophie.  His violet eyes faded to nothing.  He disintegrated and turned to ash.  The silver collar clanked on the floor.

“Benj?” she whispered.

He was not there.

She could not sense him.  Nothing.  No Benj.  No love, no feelings, no soul connection, not even a hint of blood lust.  Nothing.

“Benj!” she screamed.

Deep inside herself their child screamed.  Manson waved at Fortunatus.

“Kill him, but leave her for me.”

“Master,” Fortunatus nodded and shifted towards them.

A silvery veil appeared in his path.  Cora lunged out at him and flung him across the room.  He plowed into a row of pews.  Scaffolding rained down around him.  Stan fired at Manson again and again, empting his cylinder of bullets.

Manson dove for cover.

Stan hauled Sophie from the sanctuary.

 

 

 

They drove for days.  Sophie never asked where they were going.  She road in the brown Buick, numb and gone.   In a cheap hotel room she gave birth to a solemn baby boy with dark hair and deep, gray eyes shot with violet.

“Benj named him Crow,” Stan told her.

Only Crow brought any light to her eyes, the world was distant and cold.  Only Crow kept her alive, all her reason for living, all her love had blown away, ash in the wind.  Crow lay in her lap.  A tattoo of a torn bloody veil draped over a moon-lit coffin adorned his chest, a black raven his back, a list of X’ed out names on his right shoulder below which  was written -

I love you for always

                                And miss you forever…

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

When Skies are Gray, Prologue: Part 12 (1959)

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in When Skies are Gray…

They joined hands, two facing two.  Dread was palpable in the air.  A sour taste on the tip of the tongue.  A pain in the chest.  They waited for what would come.

Sophie sat straight up with a gasp.  Her eyes darted about, wide and staring.  Benj gripped her hand crushing her thin fingers, determined to be there for his friend.   His son followed his example, strength given to a friend.  Stan and Jack completed the circled…

…chains from the ceiling held the big man up.  His white shirt stuck to his ample stomach, drenched with sweat.

“Now it seems at last I am capturing important people and not children.”

Manson emphasizing each word with a vicious stab of a small knife as he walked around JC.  Blood ran from a plethora of tiny wounds, and turned his wet shirt pink. 

“It seems your friends have arrived.  Sophie, you learn too slowly, you stupid girl.”

JC growled.

“Oh, don’t play the heroic male for me.  She has her vampire to do that for her.”

Sophie ignored Manson’s taunting. She drew on everyone’s love for JC and plunged into him, covering him heart and soul.  His body went limp as they drew him away.

“Damn you!” Manson yelled.  

“I really hate it when she does that,” he muttered to himself. 

He went to a dark corner, pulled on some heavy gloves, and picked up a small cup filled with silver liquid.  He grunted under its weight.  Smoke drifted off the surface of the cup.

“Now let me see if I can have your full attention back.”

He lifted it over JC’s chained hand and poured.

JC screamed. His eyes flew open.  He rose up on the tips of his toes.  Acid burned through him.  It melted his skin and seared through his bones.  The stump of his arm fell to his side.  His hand broke away from the chain around it and hit the floor with a sickening thump.  Sophie wailed.  Benj howled in rage and pain.  Their son sank deep into Sophie’s womb whimpering in fear.  The lines of comfort broke.  Manson returned with two more cups and threw one at JC’s gut and the other at his crotch.  Pain seared through JC.  It ate away at him.   Jack and Stan faded from Sophie’s circle.

Sophie scrambled to gather the rips in JC’s soul.  She tried to hold him together, but the team fell apart, shattered by what they felt and she saw.  Alone, Sophie sat with empty hands in her lap. She whispered in JC’s heart. “We love you, we love you, we love you,” over and over.

One last time Manson returned with the cup.  He poised it over JC’s head.

“Sophie.  Get out now.  I don’t want you to see this,” JC gibbered, each word as broken as his soul.

Sophie hesitated as the cup tipped still hoping to gather his soul.

“Now!” he screamed as the acid came down..

With an anguished cry, Sophie fled the vision…

Vomiting, retching and dry heaving brought Sophie back to the waking world.

Stan, doubled over, could not stop throwing up.  Jack aged thirty years, his face a lined stone, his salt and pepper hair now completely white.  And Benj – dear, wonderful, brave Benjamin – sat still, a pale statute.  Tears coursed down his hollow cheeks.  He rested his hands on his knees in two fists.  His nails cut deep into his skin.  Sophie ran from the living room.  She ran to Benj’s room, their room, and threw herself on their bed.  She cried until there were no more tears.  Only inside did she keep crying.  Only inside did the pain still writhe.  Her son watched with his gray and violet eyes, watched and wondered if the still-born were more blessed than the living.

Taking pity on the house filled with so much loss, Sleep came.  He came to the candle lit windows and did what he could for the broken hearts.  Silvery gold dust fell on old man Jack, on young Stan, on the vampire who had lost a human friend, and last on a young mother with a horrible gift.

Sophie woke, confused and unsure of where she slept until she sat up.  Benj waited on the other side of the door.  She pulled back the blankets and set her feet on the carpet.  The door knob was cold under her hand as she turned it and stepped out.  Benj sat just to the left of the door.  A puddle of sunlight lay right beside him.

“I have been waiting for you to wake up so you could close the curtains.”

Sophie sat down beside him.  He put his cold arms around her.  They shed no more tears for they had no more to shed.  They only looked for comfort in proximity.  After a time, Sophie got up and closed all the curtains.  Candle wax had hardened into small puddles below each window sill during the night except for the candles put out for Guinness, West and JC.  They still burned faintly in the afternoon sun.  Sophie left them alone.

She woke Jack and Stan.  Everyone went through the motions of showering, shaving, and pretending to eat.  Benj broke the silence. “I am going to call the police.  They need to know about the family Manson killed.  I will have them bring the Beares here so I can make a link for Sophie with Cora.”

Sophie squeezed his hand, silently thanking him.

“I thought we had a link?” Stan said.

“We don’t.  Manson does,” Sophie explained. “He’s playing with us, showing me what he wants me to see, leading us where he wants us to go.”  She stared down into her cup of hot chocolate.  The thought of Manson linked to her sickened her.  “We need a link he doesn’t control.”

She hiccupped a laugh as the image of a small child shaking his fist at a cloud of darkness flashed through her.

Jack came to his feet, slow and careful like a man far older.  His hands trembled.  He approached Benj who leaned against the warm stove and slugged him in the face.  Sophie jumped in her seat.  Benj did not move.

“Be careful, old man,” he said softly.

“Be careful!  Be careful! It’s because of you they’re all dead.”  Jack grabbed the front of Benj’s shirt and shook him. “You and your selfishness, your self-righteousness!  They wouldn’t have died if you’d done what Emma told you the first night.  You bastard! You betrayed us all!”

Stan muscled in and tried to pull Jack away.  The old man jerked from Stan’s grasp and punched Benj in the face.  Again and again his fist flew at the vampire.  Benjamin’s skin cracked.  His lips split.  He did not raise even a finger to defend himself.  Sophie could not stand it.  Her son screamed to defend Benj.  She understood Jack’s anger.  She had felt that anger herself, but she knew Benj, loved him.  His pure love for her had caused his hesitation.   A love he cherished, a love which would be tainted by the link never to be pure again.

“Stop, Jack!” She slipped off her stool and stepped between them, ducking under Jack’s arm.  As if time slowed, Jack’s fist continued swinging.  He struck her on the temple.  Sophie crumpled to the floor.   The world disappeared behind bright lights.
Benj woke up.

He grabbed Jack by the shoulders and flung him across the room onto the sofa with a snarl.  It flipped over with a loud bang.  Benj bent over Sophie.  He cradled her in his arm.  With cold, gentle fingers he brushed her hair aside to examine the welt on her face.

“Are you well?”

Sophie blinked.  Her head swam.  Benj’s face healed as she watched.  Lifting her head, she kissed him softly on his new lips.  Deep inside her forest his soul warmed.  Benj helped her to her feet.  Her tummy, bigger by the moment, made it hard for her to climb off the floor.

“Call Morry,” she said to Stan. “We are running out of time.”

Jack picked himself up and righted the sofa.  Sophie curled up on it with a blanket pulled and tucked close about her and the baby.  Jack apologized for hitting her but not Benj.  They avoided one another.  Stan caught Morry up on the latest horrors.  The detective hurried to get the Beares.

“They must wait.  I cannot do this until midnight tonight.  Have him come then,” Benj said to Stan.

Stan relayed the information back. The detective promised to take care of it.

Nursing a cup of hot chocolate, Sophie watched Benj pull Stan aside.  She could not hear what Benj told him, but she sensed finality and provision, sadness and goodbyes.  Tears pricked her eyes as the two men shook hands, one having done his duty and one with a look of youthful determination.  As the hands separated, Sophie saw the flash of a key.  Benj shifted over and kissed her on the forehead.  He caressed her round womb communing with his son before he went to his room to sleep while the sun shone.  Though weary,  Sophie wanted sunlight.  She opened the curtains and with Stan’s help moved the sofa into a square of light.  The warmth soaked into her skin for a few hours before it moved out of the room.  Early fall darkness crept out of the edges of the trees and buildings.  Sophie joined Benj.  She fell quickly to sleep at his side despite the nightmare her life had become.

As another night fell, as Jack’s anger at Benj continued to burn, as Stan hovered near Sophie keeping her comfortable, as Benj shifted in a fast pace up and down the room, the doorbell rang.  Everyone jumped, startled from where they were  lost in their own worlds, thoughts, and dreams.  Sophie bit back a scream.  Benj light up like a live wire.  His fangs extended and his nails turned to claws.  Who it could be at the door? Midnight had not sounded, yet.   A witch could not mistake it for any other time.  Who was it?

“Everyone stay where you are,” Benj said.  He shifted to the front door.

Sophie sensed suspicion mixed with curiosity.  The front door open.  A chill flowed into the room.  Benj shifted out in the cold night shutting the door behind him.

“Could you see who it was?”  Sophie asked Stan who had the clearest view from where he stood.

“A man with a hard face and blond hair,” Stan said.

“Benj knows him, but he is not sure why he’s here.”

“I could have told you that, and I’m not married to him,” Stan said gently with a crooked smile.

Just like an older sister, Sophie stuck her tongue out at him.  A sudden wild laugh bubbled up from her child.  The silliness flowed to Ben from Sophie and the baby.  He lost concentration for a moment.   The laughter surprised them.  It surprised them that even in the middle of all the darkness, death and terror, a brilliant shot of laughter, true and good, sprang from inside Sophie’s heart.  Benj grasped it, the pure light of his son’s laugher, and encased it in ice as a treasure for what little time he had left.

The front door opened.  Benj shifted back into the living room with a vampire at his side.  The creature mirrored Benj’s pale, emaciated look but only stood as tall as his shoulder.  He pursed hard lips in a round face with a strong jaw.  Ice blue eyes and tidy blond hair studied Sophie’s swollen stomach with obvious distaste.  He dressed impeccably, like all vampires, in a gray suit with a vest, a crisp white button-up shirt, gleaming cufflinks and polished wingtips. The skin on his hands bore no tattoos of service, but Sophie felt, more than saw, a strange sense of magic.  Did something hide his service tattoo?

“An unlooked for offer of aid has come from Fortunatus,” Benj said.

The vampire bowed.

“What do you mean?” Sophie said, wary.  One vampire in her life was enough.  Saved vampires rarely came along, but another joining them seemed impossible.   A sense of vulnerability haunted Sophie .  She put her hands over her round stomach to protect her son who had not so nice thoughts about the new vampire.

“I have heard of this witch, this Manson,” Fortunatus said with a bow to Sophie.  “He has begun, with the help of the Gray Coven, to carve a place for himself in the world of the damned.   I wish to be of some help in keeping him from this.  Long ago, Benjamin saved my life and I feel this may be a way to repay him.”

“Are you part of the Requiem?” Sophie asked.

“No, not per se, but I respect what the Requiem does. I come with more of a desire to see this witch not gain influence among my kind than anything.  With someone like him, with the backing of the Gray, the balances of power will be tipped.  Some powerful vampires in LeVidal would like me to stop this from happening.  I may as you say ‘kill two birds with one stone’ with this job.  I will be paid and fill my debt with Benjamin.”

Sophie started up.  She did not like this vampire.  She did not like him being here.  She wanted to see his tattoos.  Benj sensed her worry.  He stopped her with his own feelings of guarded distrust.  Sophie kept her mouth shut, but glanced pointedly at Benj.

“I must go out for a time.  Fortunatus wishes to show me some things he is seeing.  We must be able to move as vampires alone can.  We must see what vampires alone can see.”

“It’s not safe!” Sophie said unwilling to let Benj out of her sight when everything around her pointed to him being gone from her forever, soon.

“This is not my appointed hour, of that you may be sure, Sophie.  You hold what of my heart is left. You will hold it still even if I am not in this room.”  Benj shifted to her side in an instant. He pulled her close, kissing her.

At the front door  he looked back.   “Do not open this for any reason.  Do not leave the house for any reason.  When I return I will come in myself.  Keep your gun handy, Stan.”

The young man nodded, his lips pressed firmly together.

Benjamin shifted out into the night with Fortunatus.

Midnight.  The witching hour.  The power of the spirit world, of the elements, of the good, of the seasons flowed through Sophie.  All the lines of power trembled with life at midnight.  She could sense them all around her.  Benj appeared in a sudden instance in their midst just before the detective arrived making everyone but Sophie jump.  She had held onto the lines which connected them the entire time he moved across the city with Fortunatus.  She had felt him returning.  Stan muttered under his breath that she could have warned them so he did not almost shoot himself.

“Peace, Stan.  You must learn to relax or you will be unable to defend yourself when it is necessary,” Benj put his hand on the barrel of the gun Stan had pointed at him.

“Fort-whatever did not come back with you?”

“No.  But he did show me that our people are beginning to take note of Manson, and many of the young Turned speak of joining with him.”

Before Stan could begin a slew of questions, Morry knocked on the door.  Benj sent Stan to answer it.  While the kid hurried off, Benj shifted to Sophie’s side and took her into their room.  He pulled her close and held her.  He rested his head on the top of hers.

“I will not hold you again with a pure love.  It will forever be tainted.  I needed to do it one last time.”

Sophie wrapped her arms around him and filled his cold body with her warmth.  Between them rested their son.  He feared for his father, feared this great dread building between his parents.  Around their family Benj and Sophie pulled a blanket of love, acceptance, and the joy of being together.  They wrapped it tightly around one another blocking out the chill to come.

“I love you for always.” Benj whispered into her hair.  Sophie cried silent tears like silver rain. “And miss you forever.”

Knowing the others waited on them and the hour which belongs to all things magical – undead, witch, fey, wiznit and all others – ticked and faded away, Sophie pulled herself together.  Benj waited as she ran a brush through her hair.   They went hand in hand into the living room.  A sick feeling rested in Sophie’s stomach like a lump of cold cereal.

“Now let me get this straight,” a standing Mr. Beare said to Stan.  “This man is a vampire, which I can’t believe, but you want me to let him suck my wife’s blood so you can find the monster who killed my Cora?”

Stan, his back to Sophie and Benj, held his hands up trying to explain the situation to Mr. Beare.

“It will not turn her.”  Benj shifted up beside Stan so the Beares would see and believe.  Mr. Beare dropped to his seat, startled.

“As soon as I have enough of her blood you can both leave.  She will be fine in a few days.”

“How can you be sure?”

“She must be bitten three times in order to be turn into an undead.”

“He will be drinking my blood as well,” Sophie said.  She stepped up to Benj’s side and took his hand. “That way he becomes a holder of our blood and Cora and I can make a link strong enough to get a lock Manson.”

“I don’t understand,” Mrs. Beare said from her seat on the sofa.

Sophie sat down beside her. “You would not even if I explained it all to you.  This is not your world.  You must trust us.  Trust Cora.  Even now she is waiting for us to do this so she can help me.  She wants to do this.”

Stars twinkled in the night sky, and the moon, filled with the powerful reflection of sunlight, shown on the house on Baker Street where a horrible decision hung in the balance.  All the rain, all the heavy clouds drifted further south to pour down on happier homes, quieter towns, less haunted families.  The Beares nodded.

“I will take you first, Mrs. Beare.  When I am done I want you both to get out of town until the detective calls you and tells you it is safe to come home.”

“Why?” Mr. Beare snapped.

“I will be filled with a powerful desire for your wife’s blood.  If we fail I would like Manson, or myself, to have to hunt for you instead of knowing right where you are,” Benj growled.

Already tense from being forced to drink Sophie’s blood, Mr. Beare’s questions fed the flames of anger.  Benj’s frustration grew with each required explanation to a human who should just be glad his name remained off the menu.  Sophie sent a wave of peace and love to Benj.  She sat down in a folding chair and clenched her hands in what little lap she had left.  She had pushed Benj towards this without thinking of the toll it would take on her.  All women know their husbands look at other women.  They cannot help it.   Sensing her husband’s lust was another betrayal altogether.  Sophie felt Benj letting himself want Mrs. Beare.  She sensed the part of him, the ‘saved’ part, the ‘Sophie’ part hating himself and everything involved with the connection.  Lust and hate.  Sophie felt sick.  The love she sent Benj withered under the desire and bitterness he battled.

Benj stepped over to her, bending down to her.  She did not look up.  He took a deep breath in through his nose and sighed.  Sophie grabbed his hand.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, still not looking at him.

He knelt down in front of her so he could look her in the eye and unbuttoned his shirt.  He took her hand and pressed it to his chest over his redemption tattoo.

“No matter what you feel, remember all of this,” he spread his fingers over his chest, “all of me belongs to you.”  He stood up and kissed her. “I will be back for you soon.”

…Join me, next Friday, for the continuation of the tale…

Influences #1: Head in the Clouds

“Bastian. Why don’t you do what you dream, Bastian?”

“But I can’t, I have to keep my feet on the ground!”

“Call my name.  Bastian, please! Save us!”

“All right! I’ll do it!  I’ll save you! I will do what I dream! 

“Moonchild!”

The NeverEnding Story captivated me as a small child.  I must have been between 6 and 8 when I saw it the first time.  I loved horses and hated the build up to Artax’s death.  I thought having a good-luck dragon might be the most amazing thing ever.  Even at that young age I loved stories.  I loved reading.  With daydreaming and reading already a big part of my life, I connected instantly with Bastian.  I was more than willing to suspend my disbelief and believe in Fantasia and all its troubles.

Early on in the film, Bastian’s father tells him he must get his head out of the clouds and keep his feet on the ground.  This horrible idea really struck a chord with me as a child.  I already feared my childhood was slipping between my fingers.  I worried that I would not get to do all the things a perfect childhood demanded before I magically turned into a boring adult around the age of 14.  The idea of keeping my feet on the ground haunted me.  When Sebastian must make the choice between his father’s command and saving all of humanity’s hopes and dreams, I’m always right there with him.  I struggle with the line between reality and the worlds and people of fantasy and dreams.

I always side with Bastian.  I jump up, run for the window, swing it open, and declare that they may be fiction, but my imaginary friends are real to me.  They are a part of me.  Aragon, Legolas, Gimli, Sam and Frodo, and all the Lord of the Rings’ heroes showed me the pure beauty of friendship.  Star Trek: Next Generation took this idea to the stars.  Reading or watching, they feel like old friends to me.  I know them.  In the halls of Hogwarts, the beauty of Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, the unlikely pairing of Con and Sunshine, to my very own Ronan, Fortunatus and Jack, I walk, live, and dream.  These characters and stories have been the clouds my head floats amongst.  I firmly refuse to put my feet on the ground.

I believe the ground is much more amazing with clouds soaring above it!  See a patch of white flowers on the side of the road and suddenly they become the grave a king.  Watch a butterfly flutter by and Spike from Cowboy Bebop comes to mind.  Never think of cinnamon rolls the same…it’s funny when they make you think of vampires.  Quote Elizabeth Bennet.  Reference vague Middle Earth or even Hogwarts history.

Life becomes dimensionally richer, sweeter, and more magical if you let the clouds stay in the sky wrapped around your head and filling it with dreams.  It’s not so much about escaping this life as it is accenting it with another level of beauty.

 “How many wishes do I get?”

“As many as you want.  And the more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become.”

“Really?”

“Try it.”

“My first wish is…”

Inheritance, No. 40: Epilogue

…Back to the Beginning…

…Last time in Inheritance…

Epilogue

The sun set, but Ronan could not see it.  Ash’s new servant cast a beautiful dusk over the cemetery.  Any normal eyes could enjoy the soft gray shroud drawn over the world.  Ronan still wore Sundance’s bandage tied across his eyes.  Jack, Zephyr, and Fortunatus gathered with him at the foot of the new grave.  He brought Sundance’s body back to Dorian, where her last great dance had been performed.  He buried her here, next to Jack’s family, next to his family.  He moved into her house which she had left for him.  He did not really understand it, but the magic she had put in place made everything she had his.  Something about it broke his heart.  Her love had joined them as one and what had been hers was now his.

“Someone is coming,” Fortunatus said.

“Ronan McPherson?” a man called out.

“That’s me.” Ronan stepped towards the voice.

“I have a package here.”

“I’ll get it,” Jack said.

Ronan listened to the swish of the grass under Jack’s feet.  He heard the leaves crunch in his path.  Jack talked for a moment then the man left.

“What is it?” Ronan asked.

“A package from someone named Vash.”

Jack opened it.  “It’s a pair of sunglasses.”

“Is there a note?”

“Yep, it says ‘from the Inventor’.”

Jack set the cool frames in his hand.  Ronan pulled the bandage off and slipped the sunglasses on.  He opened his eyes.  The world as it should be, as he remembered it, appeared before him.  He slipped the glasses down and looked over the top of the frame.  Blinding light pierced him.  He pushed the sunglasses back up.

“I can see again.  We never had time to go look for the Inventor…and I think we were never meant to.   Things moved too fast.  I was going to go back after the funeral to look for him.”

“Well, I guess he already knew.”

“I wonder if Vash is the Inventor?” Fortunatus said.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”  Ronan turned to look at him only to find him much the same, crescent moon tattoo and all.  He turned to Jack and there he saw change.  Jack, his arm in a sling, was no longer a boy.  He had been very mature for his age when Ronan met him.  Seeing what Jack had seen hunting Manson had grown him up real fast.  Not a hint of the boy remained.  He had loved and lost.  He had had to choose between what he wanted, and what was right.  He had been man enough to give up powers he could not handle.  Ronan respected that and thanked the King Jack was at his side.

“My predecessors didn’t do much,” Ronan said.  ”Or used their powers for their own evil, as you well know.  As a cop, I couldn’t do anything to help people until after the crime was committed. I want to change that.  I don’t want to assume evil witches are guilty until proven innocent, but I do want to use my power to stop monsters before they kill lots of Innocents.  I’m gonna take this power I have on the aggressive and I want you both at my side.”

“Count me in,” Jack said.

“And I as well,” said Fortunatus.

“I’ll help until the twins need me!” Zephyr gripped Jack’s ear and nodded.

Ronan looked up at the stars filling the heavens and knew that Sundance stood on the other side of the Door waiting for him.  He smiled down at her grave, and walked out of the cemetery with Jack, Zephyr, and Fortunatus at his side.

The End

…This is the end of this tale…