Samantha moon phantasm, p.90
Samantha Moon Phantasm, page 90
part #9 of Vampire for Hire Series
Chapter Three
I was driving my minivan. I hung a right, then a left, and gunned it down a mostly empty street. I ran a red light, then blew through a stop sign, and nearly hit a young man wearing earbuds in a crosswalk who didn’t seem too happy about it.
“Where next?” I asked, picking up speed on a busy street, weaving past slow-moving cars that were going the speed limit. I cursed them and panicked and, quite frankly, barely remembered any of it.
Allie pointed northwest, and I continued zig-zagging through the city, since there wasn’t a street that angled northwest. That was, until we came across Anaheim Street, which cut diagonally and gloriously through the city.
I gunned the minivan as fast as it would go, which wasn’t nearly fast enough for my taste.
“She’s with a woman,” said Allison between whimpers. “A really messed-up looking woman.”
“Messed-up, how?”
“Lipstick smeared on her face, hair in disarray. She’s sort of walking around Tammy, talking to her, touching Tammy’s hair sometimes.”
I gripped the steering wheel hard enough to tear the faux-leather covering. Touching my daughter? That thought alone caused me to blow through a red light. Hey, my inner alarm hadn’t sounded, and I knew we would be safe. Then again, they didn’t know that.
“Who is she, Sam?” asked Allison, next to me. “The jogger from yesterday?”
“Would be my guess.”
She didn’t have to say it. None of us had to say it. We all knew the jogger from yesterday was the devil himself.
I blew through another red light.
***
“The dark masters are very, very serious about re-emerging into this world, lass. But your mother isn’t cooperating and they are losing patience.”
Tammy nearly asked how the devil knew this, but knew that was a stupid question. The devil had shadowy agents everywhere. Literally, everywhere.
“Well, tough shit,” said Tammy, feeling her spine stiffen. “My mom’s immortal. And Elizabeth is stuck. Forever. And from what I understand, they need Elizabeth to carry out their plan.”
“All true, child, except you and I both know that a vampire can die.”
The words hung in the air, words that Tammy knew but didn’t want to acknowledge.
“In short, they are planning your mother’s execution. They are planning it carefully and, once done, Elizabeth will be free to pursue her next target. And in case you don’t know where I’m going with this, that next target is you. Granted, you are not ideal, but they think they can make it work.”
“I’ll never help them! And Mommy will never die, either. She’s smarter than them, tougher than them. They’ll never hurt her.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. Your mother, as you know, lost her guardian angel. Your mother, quite frankly, has been left without protection.”
“What are you saying?” asked Tammy.
The woman spread her hands wide. “I will offer her my protection. After all, it behooves me to keep the dark masters at bay. There is, after all, only room for one sheriff in town.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Your mind, of course,” said the devil. “Now, do we have a deal?”
***
“Down this street, Sam. There, do you see her?”
I did. She was standing under a streetlamp with a woman who appeared to be wearing clown makeup in front of a closed pizza joint. I noticed other things too: my inner alarm sounding, the street being oddly devoid of foot and car traffic, and the moving shadows... yes, the many shadows that seemed to be crawling up street poles or swirling under cars. Shadows that flitted through the air like black flags. I nearly rubbed my eyes, but I didn’t have to. I knew these were living shadows, dark souls, an aspect which had been left behind on Earth, while the majority of them burned in hell. I’d always suspected these forgotten, lost fragments stuck around to help the devil, seeking forgiveness. After all, why help the very entity responsible for one’s seemingly eternal punishment? I didn’t know, but it was a sick circle, and here was my daughter in the middle of it.
“Sam, that woman—”
“—is the devil,” I said. “Hang on.”
***
Tammy gasped, turned her head.
She’d been hearing her mother for quite some time, but she’d been keeping that knowledge in that secret corner of her brain. But the minivan roaring down the center of the street was hard to deny.
The woman looked, too, and grinned. “Mommy’s here. I would say ‘just in time’ but you and I know both know different, don’t we, Lady Tam Tam? You and I both know that your mother arrived just a fraction too late.”
“You will protect her, right?” asked Tammy. “You will keep her safe? You will keep an eye on her, like you promised?”
“Oh, I will keep my eye on her, don’t you worry. Meanwhile, you will be hearing from me again soon. I have some work for you.”
With that, the woman calmly reached inside her purse and removed a handgun. And with the minivan nearly on top of them, she placed the barrel of the gun next to her temple. The woman’s eyes flashed with real fear and Tammy knew she was looking at the real woman, not the devil. Except the real woman couldn’t control herself, not even a little bit. She had just mouthed, “Help me.” Then the side of her head blew off.
Tammy screamed and kept on screaming as she watched an oily, slithery, wet shadow rise up out of the dead woman and into the air. It rose higher and higher and disappeared.
Chapter Four
“Tammy’s in her room,” said Allie, looking up from the TV. I was pleased to see she was watching Judge Judy.
“It was the only thing on.”
“I’m rubbing off on you,” I said, and plopped down on the couch next to her. It was midday, the usual time I woke up, except my kids had stayed home today at my insistence. No surprise there. With Allie here, I could have slept in. Except the devil had his eye on my kids, and that made sleeping in damn near impossible.
He had to be stopped. Just how, I didn’t know. Not yet.
For now, I still needed to wake up.
We’d spent most of the last night answering questions from the police, who I had telepathically convinced to leave us out of their reports. Of course, there was no denying that my daughter would show up on CCTV footage talking to the woman. There was also no good reason for my daughter to have been in Santa Ana in the middle of the night. So I had told them that my daughter had run away. Again.
The dead woman had been looking for someone to talk to. The dead woman, it turned out, had been a realtor in Huntington Beach. A very successful realtor. Well, the police were about to discover that some people could sink to new lows. (Just wait until they saw her emerging from car after car, turning trick after trick.)
I left the devil out of it, of course. So did my daughter. Then again, she’d spent the night crying in my minivan. Allie and I had taken turns holding her hand. With each sob, I found myself growing angrier and angrier with the devil. Tammy had finally admitted that the devil had coerced her into making a deal with him, that he’d convinced her that my life was in danger from the dark masters, that they would, in fact, seek another. To do so meant that Elizabeth would have to be free. In order for her to be freed, that meant I would have to be dead. Whether his information was correct or not, the devil had frightened Tammy into making a deal with him.
“Thank you again for watching them,” I said, drinking my coffee and sitting across from her on my L-shaped couch. She’d stayed with my kids all day. At this rate, I was going to have to homeschool my kids.
“Of course, Sam. She slept for most of the day. Anthony has been in and out of his room, playing video games and watching TV. I tried to get him to do his homework and he said he would. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t.”
I nodded absently. Anthony and homework didn’t mix, but I knew he did his best. I also knew that Allison had to cancel all her personal training appointments today, and call in sick for her psychic hotline job—although she could do that from anywhere, just as long as she had a laptop and Internet connection. Of course, she had previously made it known that she felt self-conscious doing it here. Mostly because she had heard me make fun of her from the kitchen.
“You’ve gone over and above the call of duty. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
“Just knowing you guys are safe is enough.”
Indeed, having Allie watching over my kids had been comforting. My best friend’s powers seemed to only be growing. Or, more likely, she was learning how to control them better.
“A little bit of both,” she said, picking up on my thoughts.
I nodded. Kingsley was in court today. A big case. He had set off for home in the wee hours of the morning, after sitting by my side all night, holding my hand. He was dealing with his own guilt for letting Tammy slip past him. I reminded him that my daughter wasn’t just anyone, and she probably could have put any of us to sleep with her power of suggestion. My daughter’s own mental prowess, I feared, was growing. And now, the devil had access to it.
I said to Allison, “Can you give us a shield?”
“I can,” said Allison, “but it weakens in minutes. Or, rather, she finds a way through it within minutes.”
“Good enough,” I said.
Allison nodded, closed her eyes and raised her hands a little, palms up. And, son-of-a-bitch, if the air around us didn’t suddenly shimmer, like heat rising up from an oasis. But in this case, I knew it was a bubble of silence that surrounded us—and kept out the sound too. She and I might as well have been in a soundproof studio.
“Even better,” she said, picking up my thoughts. “What’s on your mind?”
“The devil has his claws in my daughter.”
“They’re connected,” said Allie.
I knew it wasn’t possession, but it was damn near close. Their mindlink gave him access to her and, according to my daughter, he didn’t need to be close by. He could use a chain of shadowy entities to reach her, from anywhere. To whisper suggestions to her. In essence, my daughter would never be free of the devil.
“And I can’t have that,” I said, finishing my thought with words, knowing Allison would have been following along.
“But, Sam. She made a deal with the devil. Isn’t that the same as selling your soul?”
I shook my head. “Selling one’s soul is just that: offering one’s soul in exchange for a favor.”
“She offered her services in exchange for your protection.”
“Yes, but not her soul.”
“No, but she offered her mind.”
Something clenched my gut.
“But how binding is it?” asked Allison. “I mean, she’s only sixteen, and he scared her into doing it.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I could give a shit if it’s binding.”
Allie was silent, even if Judge Judy wasn’t. Allie was up to her old self, and I just wanted to sink into the couch and forget the devil had ever come knocking—and somehow forget, too, that Anthony’s underwear needed washing. His boxers were in the laundry room in the garage, looking like the world’s most dangerous intersection, skid marks and all.
“Gross, Sam,” said Allie.
“You don’t have to listen to everything.”
“That went south faster than I could pull out of your head. He’s old enough to do his own laundry now, you know.”
I nodded. He was. But was I ready to admit he was? I liked having a little boy to take care of.
Allie said, “And do you really need protecting? Are the dark masters really hunting you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It didn’t ring true to me. If anything, I was getting along better than ever with Elizabeth. Granted, we weren’t besties, but I didn’t have a strong sense that she was trying to take over my body. And if she was, she was keeping it to herself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read her mind, although she could read the hell out of mine, which I didn’t think was very fair, but I didn’t make the rules. Kingsley had once suggested that maybe her own mind might reside in the Void, that parallel world they’d been banished to. That what I was sensing was only an aspect of her, a fragment. I didn’t know, and I never asked. Other than me keeping her sealed away in the deepest reaches of my mind, I wasn’t aware of any animosity. I always knew that my resistance to her had slowed the dark masters’ plans. Hell, maybe even ground them to a halt. So, yeah, it did make sense for them to someday give up on me. Unfortunately for them, I didn’t plan on dying anytime soon.
I shook my head at the craziness of it all. Just over a decade ago, my life had been normal, happy, safe, secure... peaceful. Now, I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Sam,” said Allison, interrupting my pity party. “Have you ever considered the fact that you knew you were going to be turned into a vampire in this life, that you knew you were going to host a key dark master?”
“Where’s this coming from?”
“I’m just thinking out loud. I’d read that before our births, we sort of knew what we were getting into, that we had been given a glimpse of our future lives.”
“What are you getting at?”
She turned to me, tucking her sock-clad feet under her. “I think you knew all of this was going to happen, and you accepted it.”
“Accepted what, exactly?”
“The responsibility of protecting everyone. Sam, think about it. If you knew that you were going to be a vampire—and potentially host one of the most powerful of the dark masters—then you did so willingly.”
“What are you saying?”
“Yes, your life was normal a while ago, but there was a greater evil on the horizon, an evil that desperately wants back into this world. You, and you alone, have kept it at bay. And you accepted the responsibility. Sam, you are the gatekeeper. This is a challenge that you willingly took on.”
“I didn’t willingly ask to be attacked, Allie,” I said.
“No, but you knew you would, at the soul level. And you came here anyway. You accepted the assignment, so to speak.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“You knew you were tough enough to handle them. And you are tough enough to handle them now.”
I considered her words, then recalled what my daughter had told me last. “The devil said there was only enough room for one sheriff in town. What did he mean?”
“Maybe he sees the dark masters as a threat?”
“But I thought the bastard liked when people wreaked havoc in the world. And the dark masters have wreaked the most havoc of all.”
“What if he meant there was only enough room for one ultimate evil? After all, what if the world began to fear the dark masters, and not him? Wouldn’t he lose relevance?”
I knew a lot of the devil’s existence was predicated on people’s belief in him. Part of that belief was a belief in hell itself, of which the devil was intricately a part.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then who could be the ‘other sheriff’ he’s worried about?”
“I don’t know that either,” I said.
I knew that something had to give here. The devil had caused Danny to flee and hide in my son. True, the devil had helped my son—with an implied favor owed. He had mind-linked with my daughter—and then blackmailed her to make a pact with him. The devil had sowed seeds of hate and destruction the world over, for centuries, if not millenniums. The devil, as far as I was concerned, had to go.
“Go, how?” asked Allison.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But first things first. I need to speak to Elizabeth.”
Chapter Five
I was in my home office at the back of the house, sitting in what I had once thought was a fairly comfortable recliner, until I was informed recently by Allison that it was, in fact, a Spirit Chair. Funny, the guys at La-Z-Boy never mentioned that.
It sat in the far corner of my office, with my sliding glass door on one side, a bookcase on the other, and a little catch-all table next to it, which was piled with more books, empty coffee cups, and a water bottle or three. Yes, I cleaned the table before any clients came by. I hadn’t had a client in a week. In fact, Charlie Reed had been my last official client.
Now, with Allison resuming Judge Judy, and with my daughter presumably asleep in her bedroom, I got comfortable in the recliner and closed my eyes. Sure, both Allie and Tammy could undoubtedly read my thoughts, and I wasn’t receiving anything close to privacy, the truth of the matter was, they were going to hear about my conversation with Elizabeth anyway. Truth was, my brain was open season for both of them. And the Alchemist, too, for that matter. Oh, and Elizabeth.
I sighed and got even more comfortable, burrowing my ass deeper into the seat cushion. My overhead fan was on, whirring just loud enough to give me the background noise I needed to drown out Allie, and to drown out Anthony, who was laughing at whatever show he was watching, and occasionally slapping the floor as he was wont to do. Meditating in a house full of kids—and your friendly neighborhood witch—was never going to be truly quiet. I settled for peaceful.
I took some deep breaths, and mentally prepared myself for what was to come. Bringing forward the entity within me wasn’t a hard thing to do. I didn’t need the kind of concentration I needed for automatic writing, or having an inner dialogue with Gaia, the Earth Mother. No, Elizabeth was always there, always waiting.
And she came forth eagerly. Hell, the moment I thought her name, I felt her surging up from the depths, racing through the various roadblocks that I’d put in place to keep her down, and now, here she was, in the center of my thoughts, front and center.
Good afternoon, Sssamantha Moon, she said, hissing slightly. Why she hissed, I didn’t know. But they all did it. I suspected it was meant to disarm and alarm, to cause confusion and fear.
