Grave Danger (27 page)

“
I’ll remember to tell him that.”

The wind blew across the bridge again, this time
bringing with it the smell of the ocean. Clarissa turned toward it,
taking in a deep breath of the salty fresh air. She had a peculiar
fondness for the ocean sea. The vast stretch of it always made her
feel calm when things in her life seemed to have her spinning
endlessly without anything to ground her. The seeming eternity of
the ocean put her insignificant world into manageable perspective.
Again, Clarissa had no inkling why she liked the ocean. There was
no specific memory of it to make her know this with such certainty,
it just was.

“
Have you ever been to the ocean at night?”
She heard Corrigan ask the question with only a brief hesitation in
his voice.

Clarissa shook her head. “We’re not allowed to cross
the bridge after dark.” Anastasia Island was their property, quite
legally too. She had only recently found out from Eleanor that the
flesh-eaters had their hands in commercial real-estate.

“
Would you like to go there, now?” Corrigan
asked the question. For a moment he actually held his breath as he
waited for an answer. The rational section of his mind told him to
put her from him, keep her firmly in the light of enemy. The
nonsensical part of him wanted to keep her forever in the night,
close to him.

“
Yes,” she answered him after several
heart-stopping seconds.

It was a serial moment for Clarissa, walking along
the beach at night with a flesh-eater. Corrigan seemed at little
hesitant as well of her company. She was fast coming to realize
that he didn’t socialize well with others. Not that she could blame
him. Most people weren’t friendly with creatures that they feared.
And who wouldn’t find Corrigan and his family a little scary?

“
Do you come here a lot?” Clarissa asked,
breaking their reserved silence.

“
What?” he asked. Looking down at her, he had
only just remembered she was walking next to him. He felt too
comfortable in her presence. “I wasn’t paying attention. What did
you ask me?”

“
Just like a man, tuning me out.” She glided
along the sandy beach, bare foot. It wasn’t that she could get sand
in her shoes it was just the social custom to go without shoes when
walking along the beach. “I asked if you came to the beach a lot,
do you?”

“
Yes.” Corrigan looked out into the waves as
they crashed against the shore, spraying them at times with their
force. Walking close to the edge where the water met the cool sand
he remembered how he always thought the sea reminded him of
himself, how it existed alone. People would cross its path but
ultimately in the end they would all seek the safety of
land.

“
Explain,” she commanded, but not in her bokor
voice.

Corrigan looked away from his kindred spirit in the
sea to another spirit, a spirit who was fast becoming kindred to a
part of him he believed long since dead. Though he didn’t know why
yet, a part of his psyche already knew that Clarissa was no longer
an enemy. She had thought to save him when she could have easily
turned him over to her people. For whatever reason or twist of the
hands of fate, she had come to this ancient city, it was quite
evident that her presence alone was heralding in a new era in his
existence. Would he survive it? He wasn’t sure of that yet.

“
Explain what, exactly?” Why was she so
curious to know him when others had simply written him off?
Clarissa should be home with her own kind; not out in the night
with a creature such as him. But she looked up at him, an
inquisitive curve to her enticing little mouth, her eyes honest and
lacking fear. It was then he realized he wanted to tell her
everything.

“
Tell me everything, Corrigan.” Clarissa spoke
his name, an ethereal light coming into her eyes as she said
it.

Corrigan walked beside her, keeping his distance,
but remaining close all the same. He watched her intently as she
seemed to hover above the ground. Clarissa didn’t seem quite real
and yet she was more than tangible to him. Her hand accidentally
brushed against his hand as her arm made a swing backwards.

He captured her smaller hand within his warmer one.
They were like fire and ice. His species was warm blooded, their
metabolism on overhaul from a constant ingestion of hot flesh and
blood. Her body, which though it wasn’t flesh and blood it was
tangible and real, yet cool.

Clarissa let him take her hand. If she had wanted to
she could have easily pulled away. She didn’t want to. Wrapping her
fingers more securely within his much warmer paw, she let these
sweet secret moments take her away.

“
I was a sailor in life and there was no place
I felt more at home than on the high seas.” Corrigan spoke a past
he rarely ever dwelled on and never explained to another soul,
living or otherwise. “Back in those days, they glamorized the sea
life so much so that I couldn’t help but want to be on board the
next ship heading west. There wasn’t much else for me to do. I knew
I couldn’t go to university and I damn well wasn’t going to die on
some factory line. So I joined the English Navy like all the other
boys my age and planned to live the rest of my days at
sea.”

“
I thought I would die at sea, pushed
overboard to sink into the dark depths where I would be welcomed
home. It didn’t work out that way. Instead I died on a beach on
some small Caribbean island I can’t remember, and not gallantly I
might add. Then someone had the nerve to bring me back. So here I
stand an aberration to humanity.”

Clarissa interrupted him. “How many years ago was
this?” He couldn’t possibly be much older than her, but death was
ever deceiving in these matters.

“
More years than I care to remember,” he
grumbled.

“
You’re one of the ancients than too.” Her
prediction was correct, he was likely much older than many of the
Eidolon, excluding the council members. It might explain why he had
a tendency to be grouchy and moody.

“
I’m not that old. I’m actually the youngest
brother in the family.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to make
himself feel younger. Corrigan knew he was old, as least when
compared to someone as young as Clarissa.

“
If you hadn’t died all those years ago and
you were walking around today, would you be over a hundred years
old?”

Clarissa could see him mulling over the question. In
truth it didn’t matter how many more years he existed on this earth
than her. Age was just a number to calculate the passage of time,
it didn’t make a person. Granted though, if he looked as ancient as
he seemed to be, she wasn’t sure she could so easily stick with the
theory. However, in his deathly animated state, he retained the
pleasures of youth. But it was superficial and only skin deep.

“
If I said yes, what would you
say?”

“
I’d say you look good for your age, grandpa,
and be done with it.”
Corrigan frowned, not in the least pleased by her answer. “Wait a
few decades, little girl, and then you won’t be so blasé about age.
I’ve seen the ads your people put out in their circulation papers
promoting creams and ointments for aged ghosts to help keep their
radiant glows. That stuff doesn’t really work, you
know?”

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke about
your age. Really, it doesn’t matter.” She pulled on the sleeve of
her blouse. “At least you’re not some amorphous pile of
non-corporal jelly made into something that resembles
human.”

Corrigan squeezed her cool flesh – or what was flesh
on her – realizing for the first time that her existence was no
easier than his. “No,” he answered, his voice drawling deep. “I’m
an empty shell where a human soul used to live but doesn’t anymore.
Your body may lack flesh and blood, but that is all I am – a body –
there’s nothing good or redeeming inside me.” Maybe there never
was, he thought.

“
I don’t believe that, not for a moment,” she
contradicted. He wasn’t an empty shell, she had seen inside him, if
for just a moment, and the truth was that there was more to
Corrigan LeMoyne than flesh and blood. Somewhere in that bleak
interior was a light; a heart in the spiritual as well the
physical.

He didn’t respond, letting the silence settle back
between them like a wall. Clarissa wanted to argue the point
further, but she felt he wasn’t quite ready to bear his heart to
her. She couldn’t blame him. He would be ready soon enough.

“
I should take you home,” she said instead.
Clarissa had been the one to move them from the bridge to the
shores of the beach in a matter of seconds. She could easily do the
same, traveling from the beach to the LeMoyne complex. Plus she
rather enjoyed using her talents and watching the astonished
expression on Corrigan’s face every time they manifested themselves
into a new location.

“
Where do you live?” Clarissa asked as she
found her slip-on shoes which were lined up next to his much larger
sneakers. She watched him as he sat down in the sand to put them
on.

“
I don’t think it would be a good idea if you
followed me to the complex. You should probably head on back across
the bridge. It’ll be daylight soon.” Already he could see the
streaks in the sky, feel the light as it tried to penetrate through
the darkness of nights blanket. In another hour or so it would be
dawn, a time when his species rested and hers took control of the
city.

“
You don’t trust me to be around your family.”
Clarissa knew the truth when he continued tying his laces and
refused to answer her.

“
You’re afraid I might hurt them. I wouldn’t,
I hope you know that. I realize now that perhaps I was hasty to
assume the worst from you.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Or
you’re ashamed you might actually want to be friends with a
ghost.”

Finishing the last lace, Corrigan stood up, towering
over her. Clarissa wasn’t overly tall for a human woman, but what
she lacked in height she made up for in courage.

“
No, that’s not why I don’t want you to come
home with me.”

“
Then why, do you think I’m some sort of spy
for the Eidolon? I’m not,” she assured him. “Most of the council
members don’t like me very much, nor do they trust me in the
slightest. For what reason, I haven’t figured that out yet. But I
plan to soon enough.”

“
I can’t blame them,” Corrigan remarked,
rubbing the back of his head where it had made a solid contact with
that cement piling. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find a crack
in his skull. “You’re rather scary when you get agitated. But
again, that is not the reason.”

Clarissa folded her arms expectantly, waiting for
him to explain himself. He knew she would continue to berate him
with her trumped up theories until he finally gave in and told her
the truth. She was entirely too stubborn for her own good; or his
for that matter.

“
I can guarantee that you won’t be well
received by my family. We haven’t had the best experiences with
your kind in the past. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt by
simply being what you are.”

A frown marred her pale glowing face, pulling at
that enticing mouth again. “And what am I Corrigan? When you look
at me what do you see?”

Corrigan reached out with his left hand, finding her
cool colorless cheek. At his touch he could see the color change,
becoming pink and almost fleshy in a very human way.

She watched his movements hesitantly as he drew a
line along her high cheek bone to the corner of her mouth leaving
that trail of color in his wake. And somewhere deep inside himself
he felt a stirring, his heart which beat so infrequently began to
make a steady pulse. And then he felt it, the light that always
seemed to elude his body, flickered on and off as it grew. It was
her inside him, he knew it. Only Clarissa could stand to see the
ugliness inside him and wish to remain.

Clarissa was the light, the soul inside him that
made him whole. She was the only person in his entire existence who
had ever willingly given him a piece of their self. He couldn’t do
anything but give something of himself in return.

Bending forward so that she could see the sincerity
in his eyes, he told her what he saw when he looked at her.

“
You are a woman whose soul shines brighter
than the sun and with far more promise for the creatures of this
earth. There isn’t anything about you that is ugly or amorphous and
you’re far from unappealing. I’m not ashamed to know you. You’re
far more likely to be shamed at knowing a creature like me. You
might have been my families enemy, but you’re not mine; not
anymore.”

Clarissa touched the warm hand that still hovered
over her skin, pulling it away. “You’re very sweet when you put
your mind to it.”

“
I’m not trying to be sweet, I’m being honest,
Clarissa.” He brought his hand back to move a piece of her dark
hair which had fallen over her forehead. It still amazed him that
despite her nature, she felt so real to the touch. He let his
finger once again brush against the cold flesh of her forehead. And
once again it glowed beneath his touch.

Clarissa took his hand away from her face, though it
was the last thing she wanted to do. “I’m dead,” she said in a flat
voice.

Corrigan looked down at her, those iridescent blue
eyes revealing that spark of light he kept hidden inside. Without
the slightest inflection in his voice he spoke, “So am I.”