Grave Danger (22 page)

Isabella Canova was the first one that came to
Clarissa’s mind. For a person who looked so young and innocent, she
was strong in spirit. Thinking back to when she had touched
Clarissa’s form, the slight sting, it had only been a tenth of the
potential she could unleash upon her enemies. Clarissa didn’t want
to be one of them.

“
Then what happened?” Leah encouraged. “Why
didn’t you leave, shift the atmosphere like the others?”

Clarissa shrugged. “I don’t know. It didn’t occur to
me to do that.”

“
You think too much like a human.” Leah
flipped her long black mane over her shoulder.

“
I am a human,” Clarissa remarked irritably.
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean I’m not human
anymore.”

“
I just meant, you think like a living human.
Sorry, go on. I want to hear the rest.”

Clarissa continued with her encounter with the
flesh-eaters. Repeating part of the conversation she had had with
Corrigan. It didn’t bear mentioning that she had kissed this man –
monster in a moment of weakness. She blamed it on a twisted, morbid
curiosity to see if his lips would taste like death. They had not.
It was to the flesh-eaters advantage that they looked so life-like.
However, inside they were dead and empty. But even that didn’t
quite ring true to Clarissa’s one encounter with the creatures. As
an animated corpse, they shouldn’t have that spark of humanity that
Clarissa had seen in Corrigan’s eyes. Yes, his eyes revealed an
empty void, but was it a lack of soul or a lack of something
else?

“
He’s lying to you.” Leah grabbed one of the
bed pillows behind her, holding it tightly in her arms, tucking it
under her chin. “Grayson would never disobey an order from the
community. He couldn’t have been out in the city during their
feeding hours. He knows better.”

She rubbed her face against the cool satin covering
on the pillow. “They found him in the street, down by the river
docks. I didn’t find out until the day of the meeting. It had
happened the night before.” Leah closed her eyes, hiding her face
in the pillow for a moment. “Grayson was the last person I would
think of as a target by the others.”

Leah made a strange sound, partially muffled by the
pillow. It was part sob and part laugh. It was a reaction from the
images she was flipping through in her mind; some of them happy
ones of her best friend, others of his mutilated corpse lying prone
on the cement wall by the river. Leah hadn’t actually seen his
body, but she had a very graphic imagination, easily painting the
morbid demise of a man in his prime.

“
Grandma said that he was dressed like he had
been in his bed; no shoes. It looked like he’d been dragged down
the street, leaving a trail of blood from his house to where they
found him.” Leah looked up from the pillow, her eyes showing glassy
with unshed tears. “It was like they wanted to get caught, like
they were making a statement against us. What do they want? Isn’t
it enough that we allow them to remain here, killing people, why
isn’t that good enough for them?”

Clarissa shook her head, having no reassuring answer
to reply with. There was something off about the entire situation.
The deaths had been brutal, but it had only been the S.S. member’s
deaths that had been given the extra slash of cruelty by leaving
their bodies out in the open where they could be easily discovered.
No other bodies had been left out like that. It did seem like the
flesh-eaters were making a statement, by killing the servants of
the Eidolon, they were striking close to the heart of the
community. Almost as if they knew and wanted retaliation from
them.

“
No, he can’t lie to me. I can command him to
tell the truth.” Clarissa remembered seeing the fire in Corrigan’s
eyes when she had used that strange almost unholy voice to control
his behavior. There was something within the depths of his
iridescent eyes that said he had been compelled by a bokor before.
Who? She didn’t know, but then Clarissa hadn’t known a lot of
things before meeting him. Such as how extremely handsome and
enthralling a monster could be.

“
Well now that they know we have a death bokor
on our side they’ll be more aggressive than ever to get rid of us.
We should tell someone. Once the flesh-eaters tell their own that
you’re here, it won’t be long before they will want to take you
down as well.”

“
No, not yet,” Clarissa said, urging Leah to
keep her seat on the bed. She was on edge now, a sudden panic
coming over her. “I want you to promise me that you won’t tell
anyone what I am. Can you do that, Leah? Please, I just need some
time to figure this out, before everyone makes a big to do over
it.”

“
You’re asking me to keep this to myself, like
a secret?” Leah looked doubtfully at Clarissa who remained almost
motionless on the bed. Sometimes Clarissa seemed like any living
person, even in death. Then other times, like now, there was a look
about her body that made her seem more supernatural than even the
supernatural things in this old city.

“
Yes,” Clarissa said, trying her voice on
Leah. “You should go home now. It’s getting late.” She rose from
the bed, intending to escort Leah to the door. It was still early
enough that the young woman wouldn’t need to be escorted to her
home.

“
What are you going to do, Clarissa? I know
you’re up to something.” Leah came off the bed as well, coming to
stand close to her. Looking up at the taller woman, she angled her
head to the right, her eyes probing the ghost woman. “Your face
betrays you. You obviously haven’t perfected the poker face. I can
see your brain firing off at all speeds.”

Clarissa grinned. “I don’t actually have a brain,
Leah. So that’s impossible.” She had the semblance of a brain, as
she was a doppelganger of her former living self, her human brain
was superimposed into this other deathly form. It was the luck of
the drawl that her ghostly brain functioned as well as the livings.
Many were not as lucky, wandering aimlessly, usually categorized as
a residual haunting. They performed habitual tasks that had left an
imprint during the specters life; thus they existed in a mindless
rut.

Leah looked unimpressed with Clarissa’s evasive
tactic. “Seriously, tell me. I’m not leaving this house until you
do.” She had that serious expression, one that the living used when
they wanted to show authority and control. Lately the living in the
old city had very little control over their world.

Clarissa had revealed much of herself to Leah. There
was no sense in keeping the rest from her. The young woman had lost
a best friend, a man who had much to live for. She of all people
would understand why Clarissa had to do this – needed to do
this.

Forcing down the doubts that plagued her, squelching
the thought that she might be wrong about them, she told Leah in a
voice of little inflection what she was going to do this night.
“I’m doing what I was bred to do. It’s why I knew I belonged here,
why the city brought me to all of you. Everyone has a purpose in
life and I have one even in death.”

Clarissa stepped around Leah, going to the open
window. She looked out from her second story window into the
darkness. In a few hours they would be out there, scouring the city
for the next kill. Tonight, unlike all the other nights they were
allowed to feast on the living, there was a new force to combat
with. It was time for all of this to end.

“
I’m going to hunt the flesh-eaters tonight,”
she whispered out into the night. “Tonight a flesh-eater will
breathe his last breath.”

Clarissa heard Leah as she stood behind her. “Then
I’m coming too. You can use me as bate.”

Chapter 12-

Across the Bridge of Lions on Anastasia Island, past
the Alligator Farm and the supposed haunted lighthouse, far away
from other domestic housing and surrounded by the natural beauty of
wooded lands was the LeMoyne complex. Protected by high walls and a
rough terrain, the land bordering the complex dissuaded even the
most curious from exploring. Not that it would be in their best
interest to do so anyway.

Moss and other foliage covered the high coquina
walls making the exterior seem almost invisible, blending in
seamlessly with the natural world. If one didn’t know the place was
there it would be easy enough to simply drive past the narrow strip
of dirt road leading up to it. Not even a street sign marked it and
most locals ignored what they couldn’t understand. So the LeMoyne’s
were left in peace. However, unlike the drab exterior, inside was a
different matter as the unkempt exterior walls and lands hid the
manicured perfection within.

The main house lay dead center on a property that
covered a ten acre span, the rest of the surrounding land was
protected under the wildlife conservations of Florida. No one was
allowed to build near the LeMoynes and no one save God himself
could force them to leave. Built also from coquina rock, harvested
on the island, the two story house sat as a silent observer to the
rest of the property.

Ambrose LeMoyne, a man who like his name was the
product of the two half’s of his parentage; half Scots and half
French. His fair perfect skin and red hair he inherited from his
Norman father and his temperament and ingenuity from his Celtic
mother. It was from his surname, given to each of the brothers and
sisters, that they were united, if not in blood than in faith.

Ambrose had come to this country, traveling far from
home, and settling along the St. Johns River when the French began
exploring the new world. The French Huguenots made settlement in
the wild and scary tropics of St. Augustine, but were quickly and
expertly pushed out by the invading Spanish settlers. In a skirmish
that devastated the French community, Ambrose barely escaped death,
as he and his community were pushed farther inland. In a sick twist
of fate, it was not from the hands of an enemy in battle that
Ambrose felt the sting of death, but from someone close to his
heart.

The LeMoyne family sat about the large Elmwood
table, imported from England over two hundred years ago. It and all
the furniture in the house had previously resided in Ambrose’s
colonial residence in New England. He was the last of the
flesh-eaters left from a time in St. Augustine history when their
kind had all but been exterminated. The now ruling Eidolon council
had yet to have been born or had been tiny babes in their nursery
cribs when the flesh-eaters of the area had been put down by the
death bokors of the time.

As was customary on a Sunday evening, the family
would sit about the large oval dining table for a meal; a meal that
did not consist of human flesh and blood. For a few hours every
week, the motley looking group would behave like any other human
family with a homemade meal and conversation.

Corrigan stared listlessly into a reflection of
himself made on the thickly varnished table top, the light overhead
casting shadows under his eyes. Rarely did he ever catch a glimpse
of himself in a reflecting surface. He didn’t even own a mirror nor
would he allow one to be put into his converted room in the above
attic. There was no room in Corrigan’s life for vanity and on the
few occasions he had the misfortune to see his outer self, it made
him realize what a twisted world he lived in.

He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, with an
attractive and appealing countenance. If he tried hard enough he
could even be likeable to some. But the entirely superficial façade
couldn’t hide completely the emptiness inside. Looking into his
eyes, his entire soul or lack of one was laid to bear for the world
to see. What was a man without a soul, but an empty shell?

God must truly hate me, Corrigan thought. The powers
of the universe had a way of challenging the creatures of this
world. In his case, the great powers saw fit to give him the face
and body of a gorgeous man, but they forgot to put anything else
inside it. Inside was cold death, a vast void of utter
meaninglessness and there was nothing on this earth to penetrate
the icy blackness of his sluggishly beating heart.

That wasn’t quite true. There had been something –
someone – a woman who for all her annoying attributes was a
brightly pure light, so much so that for a brief moment in this
existence he had felt alive on the inside, complete. For that one
moment of complete unity, Corrigan had known what it was like to
once again possess a soul, hers. He wasn’t sure if she had been
aware at the time that she had shared her soul with him. It was
brave and selfless. If he wanted to he could have taken her, taken
her soul, leaving her with nothing.

She is your worst enemy.

The woman.

The ghost.

The death bokor.

Clarissa was all those things and more. She was a
mystery he dare not figure out. For someone of her lethal potential
she had very little self awareness, not even knowing she was bokor
until he had unintentionally told her. And she didn’t seem to get
that he was a flesh-eater, capable of extreme violence and
destruction. No. She had stood boldly, not fleeing as he had
expected and confronted him. Granted she was at a slight advance as
a bokor, but not so much that she couldn’t be taken down. She was a
foolish girl, playing detective work for her people. If he were
smart, he’d forget about her. Whatever was targeting the Eidolon
would eventually get to her too. She’d be out of his hair and his
mind soon enough.

And she had been in his mind. If he didn’t know
better, he’d think she was haunting him on purpose. Ghosts were
infuriating like that. They thought they were entitled to the world
and had a serious inferiority complex because of the lack of flesh
and the fact that most of the living refused to see them. Like
whining children, after awhile you just started blocking them out
or you would go insane. Maybe that was it. Corrigan was going
insane.