Samantha moon phantasm, p.123
Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 123
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
Either way, Annie’s alive. She escaped the fate that befell my former self. I spared Gene the torment that my once-father suffered.
I could live with that.
You’re dead, Sssam.
Yeah. Yeah. Technicalities.
Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth retreated again when I went to leave and Annie’s parents hugged and sobbed all over me for a good ten minutes.
“I don’t know where you came from or why you got involved, but thank you!” Gene shook my hand so hard I expected it to come off in his grip. “This is cliché as hell, but there’s nothing we can ever do that will repay you for this.”
I smiled. “Believe your daughter. Embrace her gift. Be the best parents you can be and I’ll call it even.”
Rita wiped tears and hugged me again. “You’re an angel!”
“I only play one on TV.”
Anthony snickered.
“What?” I glanced at him. “Really, I’m just kinda winging it here.”
Tammy groaned.
Allison shook her head at me.
“All right. I really should go get started on finding that thing.” By now, everyone present knew what that “thing” was.
“Wait!” yelled Annie. She let go of her parents and zipped over to stand in front of me.
The little lavender light ball on her shoulder, quite well hidden amid her hair, appeared to be whispering in her ear.
Annie reached both hands up. “Take my hands.”
I did.
She closed her eyes.
A moment later, her hair fluttered on a breeze that didn’t exist. Green and yellow light comets emerged from thin air around her, orbiting us both. They whirled faster and faster until they smeared into rings. Her parents watched this spectacle with raised eyebrows and no color in their cheeks. Kingsley quirked one eyebrow. Allison had a face on like a professor watching one of their students figure something out on their own. My son’s expression more or less gave off a ‘that’s pretty cool’ vibe, while Tammy had resumed the teen surly stare at nothing in particular.
I suspected she actually made that face while trying to concentrate on not hearing all the thoughts going on around her. Her non-reaction to that idea in my head kinda proved it.
The orbiting lights collapsed into me, settling as a brief warmth in my gut before fading away.
“There,” said Annie. “We both touched that monster. Maple told me you kinda have a way to find him. I just tried to make it stronger.”
“True. I have a link to him… somehow. Maple?”
Annie beamed. “The fairy! Her name isn’t really Maple, but I call her that ’cause her real name is too hard to say.”
Hmm. I didn’t sense anything had changed. Still, if a kid gives you artwork they made, no matter how unrecognizable it is, you act like they handed you a Picasso. Even though her spell didn’t seem to have any effect, I decided not to question it. “Awesome. Thank you!”
She leapt into a hug, squeezing me. “Thank you so much for saving me.”
“I’m just glad I was able to find you.”
“Miss Moon…” Little Annie leaned back enough to stare into my eyes. “You messed with my head, didn’t you? I know you did something but I can’t tell what.”
“I only made a minor change so you could handle it all better. Just made things a little less scary. I didn’t change anything you lived through or saw.”
“Okay. That’s cool. Maple says whatever you did was good for me, so I won’t be upset.”
Tammy rolled her eyes. Thank God she’s not mad at you, ma. It’s not like you saved her ass or anything.
Go back deeper, I thought, and you’ll see we had an agreement. I kinda broke the agreement.
Hard pass. I get enough information coming at me without having to go looking for more.
Fine. Then ease back on the attitude, young lady.
Her eyes started up again, but stopped in mid-roll—which looked like it might have hurt.
She laughed. You’re such a dork, Mom.
I grinned, and we proceeded through the emotional farewell process. Allison left her card in case Annie had any questions about witchy stuff. No sooner did we all climb into the Momvan than Kingsley ranted a little bit about my going off alone. He didn’t ‘yell at me,’ just aired how frustrated he was that he couldn’t help.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. He got away, but I’m pretty sure I can destroy him. Or, I mean we can. He didn’t seem truly alive, no emotions at all… until I got a piece of him with the sword. That seemed to scare him.”
“That thing killed the Devil. It damn sure better kill a piece-of... inquisitor who overstepped his station.” Kingsley scowled.
“You can say shit in front of us. We’re not little anymore,” muttered Anthony. “I say shit all the time.”
“You’d better not in front of me,” I said.
“Sheesh, Mom. Like I would really do that.”
“You just said it twice, idiot.” Tammy tossed an empty plastic bottle at him, bouncing it off his head.
“It’s okay when you’re making a point.”
“What point?”
“That it’s okay to say shit around us—oh, shit! Oops!”
I nearly laughed but the mom in me was strong. I told Anthony to settle down and Tammy to never call her brother an idiot again. That done, I caught Allison’s eye and we both snickered.
Kingsley twisted around to smile at the back seat. “I was censoring myself for innocent ears.” He indicated Allison with a nod.
She picked her eye with a middle finger, making him laugh.
“So… the Red Rider is still out there?” Kingsley asked.
I nodded glumly. “Yeah.”
He reached over and took my hand. “You okay?”
“Frustrated, but otherwise, yeah. More pissed than anything. I really, really want to kill that son of a bitch.”
“Is ‘son of a bitch’ an insult if someone’s mom is a werewolf?” asked Anthony.
Kingsley cackled. “No, it’s a statement of fact.”
Tammy and Allison sighed. Kingsley chuckled.
“Allie,” I asked. “Did that girl actually do anything with that light show?”
“I think so, yes. She strengthened the link you have to the Red Rider. At least, making it a much more effective tracking tool. I think you’ve got a couple days, a week at most, before it wears off. But, in that time, you should be able to feel a stronger pull toward him.”
“I got nothing. Not even a twitch.”
Allison rubbed her temples in thought.
I started the engine, backed out of the driveway, and proceeded to head home. Kingsley preferred to drive, and usually did so. He never outright told me that it was a ‘man’s job’ to drive, but that’s the impression I got from him. Kingsley had, after all, grown up in a far different time with far different social mores. Still, I liked driving, even if Kingsley did make liberal use of the ‘oh, shit’ handle. Hey, my driving wasn’t that bad.
Hmmph, came Tammy’s voice in my head.
“He’s gotta be on a different plane,” said Allison about ten minutes later.
“Quite possible. That’s why he’s been such a bitch to find. He keeps going up the dimensional ladder… past where even angels can get to.”
Tammy scrunched her eyebrows. “If angels work for God, how can that monster go higher than them? Shouldn’t they be able to get closer?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea how any of that works, just that I somehow have to find a way to chase him across multiple dimensions… oh, and if I stay too long out of the one I belong in, I start to disintegrate.”
“Eww,” said Tammy. “Disintegration sucks.”
“Mom…” Anthony squeezed my shoulder from behind. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay?”
I can’t tell if he’s kidding or serious.
“Have you been paying attention to like anything lately?” asked Tammy. “Everything Mom does is crazy.”
“Okay. Crazier than normal,” he said, sounding far too much like an adult for my liking.
“If crazy has become normal, how do we define crazier than crazy?” asked Allison.
“That’s a lot of crazy,” said Kingsley from the front seat.
Tammy sighed hard while Anthony laughed.
Minutes later, the word ‘crazy,’ which had become lodged in my subconscious, made me think of some of the weirdos I’d run into during my career. This one guy… A HUD property I used to be responsible for got burned down by a guy who thought his girl cheated with some other man who lived in that house. Dudes do weird things when they’re in love. I randomly think of Van Gogh cutting off his ear.
… and the fairy cloud taking on his image…
Wait… What? Why? Yeah, that should’ve meant something, but I’d been kinda fixated on a missing and soon-to-be-gruesomely-murdered child. At least I stopped that from happening. Having been denied Annie, the Red Rider would likely grab another kid soon though, of that I was certain. Considering Annie’s strength, he may go after her again. Hopefully, however long it takes him to lick that wound I gave him is enough for me to catch up to him. Damn good thing Annie’s got a strong spirit. I can’t even imagine what must’ve been going through her mind while lying there alone in the cave, unable to move, starving, no water, knowing she would be killed.
And the bastard got away.
Into that box.
… which looked like an impressionist painting inside.
Van Gogh did impressionist work.
A sudden thought leapt into my mind… the demon-possessed artist gave me a painting that looked an awful damn lot like a Van Gogh, but none that had acquired any fame. A lost Van Gogh? Shit! I started to accelerate but remembered my kids were in the car, so I forced myself to—mostly—follow the speed limit.
Chapter Fourteen
I ran through the house to the painting in question as soon as we got home.
Talos seemed to think that Van Gogh might be a creator who potentially achieved immortality by painting himself over and over again. But, as far as I knew, he died in his thirties after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Shot himself in the chest or something, didn’t die right away… succumbing a day or so later to an infection. Hmm. I wonder if that was every bit as much of a cover story as the FBI believing some crazy woodland hermit kidnapped Annie. If Van Gogh had given up on the third dimension and wanted to go higher, he’d have to come up with a cover story. Or maybe his relatives filled that stuff in after he disappeared. The dude supposedly suffered from serious depression, so it’s likely he didn’t really care what he left behind.
The more I stared at that painting, the more I began to see the man as Jeffcock. Argh. I can’t think that name with a straight face. J.C. Right. My in-another-life dad, and vampire sire to boot. Yeah, guys do strange things for love all right, and not just romantic love. Seeking out a vampire, asking to be made immortal, and spending five centuries hunting down the guy who killed your daughter. Yeah. Neither my dad in this lifetime nor Danny would’ve done anything of the sort for me, or even our kids. Well… maybe at one time. My ex-husband did, after all, begin dabbling in dark mysticism in search of a way to get his wife back. Because, you know, Samantha Moon died that night in Hillcrest Park and I’m really just some monster who looked, talked, sounded, and thought like her. He did love me deeply, but couldn’t handle losing me. Even though he hadn’t actually lost me.
Maybe I should’ve kept the vampire thing secret from him after all. He clearly did not handle it well.
Anyway...
The girl in the painting has to be Daisy. J.C.’s letter mentioned they’d lived together for ‘many years’ after the wife died. I’d been seeing her in my mind’s eye as around eighteen to twenty based on that, but the girl in this painting looked about Tammy’s age. Clearly a teen on the older end of teen. Definitely not a ten-year-old. Either Annie is unusually powerful, or the Red Rider is desperate and willing to pluck an unripe witchy fruit rather than waiting for it to be ready.
Here’s hoping it’s option two and he’s weak.
“What?” asked Kingsley, sidling up alongside me. “You think there’s something to this painting?”
“There has to be. I’m sure it’s a Van Gogh. He must’ve painted it years ago.”
“I think you’re being too hopeful. It looks fresh.” He tapped at it. “I’m no art expert, but I’ve heard somewhere that it takes oils years to fully set and this doesn’t seem like it’s reached that point. I can still smell the paint.”
“I’m sure he did.”
“But Van Gogh is dead, Sam.”
I glanced at Kingsley. “Is he? He kept painting self-portraits. If he’s a creator, it’s possible he achieved some measure of immortality, or at least a far longer than normal lifespan by constantly inserting himself into his creations. Perhaps he lives on? Or maybe he did die here on Earth, and one of the many various iterations of himself that he made in the other dimensions are still there.”
“I didn’t think LSD worked on vampires.” Kingsley grinned.
“You know I’m serious.”
“Yes, and you know everything you said right now just went straight over my furry canine head. I like to keep things simple and grounded.”
“Oh, practicing law is simple?”
“Compared to dimension hopping and alternate planes, it is.”
“Okay. That’s a fair point.” I reached toward the painting. “I keep running into references to Van Gogh. I don’t know if he has anything specifically to do with what’s going on here, but it feels like the Universe is nudging me in this direction.”
I expected to feel the texture of layered oil paint under my fingertips.
I did not expect to have an invisible force grab me and hurl me forward.
Screaming in surprise, I flew headfirst into a blinding haze of greenery. The next thing I knew, I found myself in a fairy tale forest, only everything looked way bizarre. Ever see those performance artists who literally paint people so they look like they’re in oil paintings? Yeah. That world was around me now. The trees, rocks, grass, everything I could see looked like I’d physically entered an oil painting with strong impressionist leanings. Including my body. I lost a moment gawking at my hands.
Great. I’d wound up in a painter’s version of the music video for Take On Me. If guys start chasing me with pipe wrenches, I’m going to have an issue.
“Tis a lovely day, is’t not?” asked a young female voice up ahead. “My animals shall beest hither lief. I behold fia to their company.”
“It doest me valorous to see thee in such high spirits, daughter,” replied a man.
Oh, what the hell is going on? With no better ideas, I advanced at a light jog toward the voices.
“Father, I doth thee heareth yond rustle in the woods. Seemeth mine furry cater-cousins has’t cometh early?”
I soon reached the end of the trees where the woods met a smallish clearing with rolling meadow, a placid stream, flowers… and two painting-people. The man appeared to be in his later thirties, the young woman maybe sixteen or seventeen. Again, I looked around at the surreal scenery. Everything still appeared to be a painting.
“Excuse me. I think I’m a bit lost.” I smiled.
“Oh, ill fortune, traveler. Worry not as thou art safe hither. T’is most wondrous to maketh thy acquaintance. I am Jeffcock and this is mine daughter, Daisy.”
“Valorous day, Miss.” The girl nodded in greeting.
“Oh… shit. I just went straight off the deep end, didn’t I?”
The two exchanged glances.
“Father, wherefore doest this mistress speaketh in such a strange manner?”
Yeah.
Crap.
I’ve wound up staring at myself from 500 years ago.
I pointed two fingers at J.C. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
Chapter Fifteen
It took me a few minutes to wrap my brain around what my senses tried to tell it.
Fact one: I’d somehow gone into a painting.
Fact two: Standing in front of me were my once-father and once-self, Daisy.
Fact three: I had a strong sense that I no longer existed within the third dimension.
Fact four: I never could read Shakespeare without getting a headache, much less listen to it.
Of course, fact three gave me a time limit. Though, I couldn’t quite tell if I’d ended up in the fourth or merely a pocket nestled in the third, like the world of Dur. I’d try to figure out where Dur existed on the ‘ladder’ so to speak, but one, I didn’t have that kind of time and two, I didn’t want to go insane. Talos had a really good point as to why humans were stuck on the third dimension. We like it there. Thinking too much about beyond that is painful. I mean for heck’s sake, I can sum up the reason we aren’t ready for the fourth dimension yet (much less higher) in two words: Duck Dynasty.
When a bunch of backwoods dudes blasting birds out of the air was more popular than science and art? Yeah… my dragon companion’s notion of it being roughly a hundred thousand years before humans were ready for more than three dimensions sounds about right, if not a bit generous.
But, back to that time-wasting thing. I’m either going to disintegrate if I stay in here too long, or the Red Rider is going to hurt someone else… most likely before I can find them. My becoming involved in the Annie situation was a stroke of pure luck. I can’t roll those dice again.
Before I could think of anything to ask these people, my brain got stuck trying to figure out if they were people. Clearly, Daisy, my former pre-reincarnation by several lifetimes self, had been murdered. From the look of her, probably not long from now. Crap. That pissed me off even more to find out I’d been so young. Sixteen is still a child to me. That’s a year younger than Tammy, and the thought that someone murdered a kid that age made my blood boil.
Oh, I totally understood why J.C. did what he did.
He seemed to pick up on the meaning in the look I gave him.
“Prithee, allow me a moment to confer with the mistress in confidence, sweet Daisy. Matters not suit’d to a babe of thy tender age.”
