"The creatures are also said to have once been human, men and women who've made a pact with Satan or some old world god, receiving profane powers in exchange for offerings of blood. The
Loogaroo
is a
shapeshifter
that's presumably entered the Caribbean from Guinea and the African Congo. On the ivory coast they call it
Asanbosam
."
"So they say."
"I spent a great deal of time in Scotland as a child. There, this beast, if it exists, is known as the
Boabhan
Sith
, a parasite that disguises itself and lures travelers to their deaths. The Germans have another name for it, the
Blutsauger
. In Ireland, the
Dearg
-Due."
She did not need a history lesson in this area. She'd met people from all across the face of the earth and heard the epic fables and mythologies. The Chinese named it His-
Hsue
-
Kuei
, the "suck-blood demon." Brazilians knew the
Jaracacas
, which appeared in the shape of a snake feeding from the breast of a nursing mother, which pushed the infant out of the way and kept it quiet by shoving its tail into the baby's mouth. Until the beast grew tired of milk and began feasting on blood. She knew of at least a dozen more such tales.
"You've quite an imagination, Mr. Maycomb."
"I pride myself on my reason and common sense."
"Perhaps most men of wild fancies do, sir."
Elaine Maycomb, who had offered nothing to this thread of the conversation, turned pale and managed to cough a single word loose from deep in her chest. "
Daemonia
Wampyros
."
"There's no such critter," Crimson replied, as she always would.
Maycomb eyed her for a moment. "Have you ever been in love, Lady
Sanglant
Cheveaux
?"
"The hell kind of question is that, you pompous bastard?"
"We've heard that you know something of these matters. That you yourself have lost one dear to you."
"You've been told lies."
"You needed to know my circumstances and now you do. I'll pay whatever price you ask. I want to hire a private vessel and have you lead us to
Villaine's
refuge. Once there, you can leave immediately if you so wish."
"You can both sink to the bottoms." Crimson toppled her chair as she stormed out, hoping none of her enemies approached just now. She wouldn't be able to draw her cutlass with these damn hands. Her lip was bleeding again and she sucked at it, tasting the blood as it filled her mouth.
She spat it out on the lobby floor.
In the deep night, she gazes down from her snow-covered tower staring at the ice-choked sea and the splintered hulls of shipwrecks crushed against the rocks. Masts lay shattered and askew, lines flail in search of victims. Torn sails flap and hang loose as the shredded clothes of murdered men.
She glances at the cliffs and wonders if she'll ever have the strength to leap to a complacent, satisfying death. So peaceful and extraordinary. There are dead sailors there, she thinks, drifting in the waves and crawling about on the reef. They wait with soulless gazes, gesturing to her, beckoning, always and forever watching. Some of them are her former crew members, some family.
Her mother is immersed in the rushing waters, with her nightgown floating up around her shoulders. Mama with her eyes glowing yellow and peering up at her, arms raised.
She brushes the curtains and those faces in the drapes glower and glare.
No wonder Mama gave up so early, so young. No one could live for long with the weight of so much evil bearing down all the time
.
The snow falls.
Turning, she hears the rustling of her husband's entrance.
He slips inside through the bolted door and whispers for her. "Cassandra." This has happened many times before, and yet she can remember no particulars—only the constant burden of failed responsibility. The unrelenting blackness grows thicker each night because of this.
Now she feels him here, gliding across the room towards her as his features take shape in the dark. Mama is singing so far below, one of the Irish songs about open fields of battle and dying beloved horses. The Irish whimpered over every ache but they knew how to sing of glory and tragedy. It could make you fall to your knees weeping when nothing else would. Mama goes on.
Clouds slither across the sky. Curtains snap against his collar and his long black hair is silhouetted by the moon, framing each angle of the face she knows so well. His arm reaches past and slowly closes the shutters, as though he's aware of her thoughts. There was a time when she enjoyed that, feeling him warmly nestled inside her mind. His cloak sweeps against her thigh and she recalls dancing with him across marble verandas in Jamaica.
As the shutters squeak and ease together the light dwindles to almost nothing, until she is alone with him and the complete gloom of their attachment. Devotion is damnation. The cold intensifies until she's shuddering violently, teeth chattering, knowing her love has found her again. She reaches out hoping to grab hold of him, if he's there. He's always there.
"Cassandra."
"Leave me, Tyree."
"No."
"You must, for your own endless rest.”
“Never, love."
"Be at peace."
"Only with you."
His voice is very much the same, most of the time, and it lifts her heart too far when she hears it.
This is truly what hell is
, she thinks: the living hope for the love of a dead man.
What more can God do to her?
Nothing
, she decides, and with that belief comes resolution, even relief. It's exactly what she's been waiting for, here in her tower. She backs up to the bed and lays back against the thick covers once more. She's as ready as she can be, and prays it is enough.
"Then come back to me."
"I cannot," he tells her. "I try but it is so...difficult...even this... touching you in this way..."
"What...?"
There are lives beyond the daylight, plateaus one can only reach in nightmare. Mama taught her that, back when the fever gripped her and she went off to strange and foreign places. He travels the same byways.
It has always been like this, since she lost him. The struggling about in murkiness, the driving fear, and the oppressive ballast of their passion. Desire that no longer exists in the living world.
Perhaps she's only gone utterly insane. That, if nothing else, would be a great comfort.
Her frosted breath rises and again bursts against the jutting stone angles of his hard face. It is an image that draws her back into herself. She can taste the wine she was drinking with Maycomb and his wife.
Benbow
. They want her to go to the island of
Benbow
.
It's a refrain of the mind that conjures dread. Haunted waters swell and surge, and the bottoms are heavy with drowned men buried in mud. Those who wait for the storms to come.
"Tyree?" she asks. "Are you there on
Benbow
? Am I supposed to find you there. Tell me so I'll know what to do."
"Let's not talk of that now, Cassandra."
Sometimes he can almost sound exactly like the man he'd once been, filled with the same charm and an eagerness towards laughter. There's a slight chuckle beneath his words, the kind that always made her smile. An appealing brazenness originally drew her to him, but it was the times of quiet playfulness that kept her. She cannot help wondering how much of him is left and if, somewhere inside himself, he is screaming for her to do what must be done.
She ought to find a virgin boy, place him on a horse of solid white and lead them across the island's graveyards. Moving from east to west, following the sun's course. That's what she should do. When the horse is unable to pass over a grave she'll know what lies within. She'll be ready to use the hoops of iron to break his limbs and, when he arises, she'll stake the body with ash wood and hack his head off with the sickle or her cutlass. Thorns will be placed under the tongue so he'll never drink such a sanguine brew again.
After she's done weeping and can gather her strength once more, she'll pull herself from the mud and finish what she's started. This is how it must be. She'll bury the head face down so that, if it still lives, it can do nothing but burrow into the dirt with all those teeth.
"What's that noise?" he asks.
"Mama."
"Your mother?"
"In the water. Trying to protect me."
Again there's that slight laughter just under the surface, waiting to be expressed. "She's strong."
He's talking about her spirit, she understands, and how hard it is for any of them to battle through the veils of the afterlife.
"Yes, she always was, even on her deathbed before she finally relented. What is it you want, Tyree?"
"You know already."
It's true, she does.
His lips crush against hers but she moves aside, thinking like a fighter now as she shoves against his chilled flesh. There's only a moment of resistance and then it's as though he's not even there anymore, only a puff of freezing air. Instantly he's behind her and blocking her path. She needs to get to the pillows and the ash wood and pike hidden beneath them.
There are things that need killing here. That's the fire that stays with her. Mama's lament continues to carry and that gives her the will to keep going. Her hands flex and then squeeze into fists. The quaint pain of fingernails digging into her palms holds her determination in place.
He says her name again and now they're each moving a little faster because their time is nearly over for the night. The dream is leading them towards dawn and a waking life where the sun burns away such phantoms, for a time. "Cassandra." Tyree repeats it once more, making the word lyrical. A lullaby that shall rock her into complacency. This is what he does, drawing it out with his inhuman tongue as if sucking at it like it was her neck. She frowns, knowing they've passed this way many times before since his death. "
Cassssssandraaa
."
She is a pirate, and she's not afraid of blood. "Enough of that, you bastard. My name is Crimson."
"Oh yes, yes..."
"Sweet words only count for so much.”
“...love..."
"You've forgotten quite a bit of it since you've bedded down in Davy Jones' locker."
She brings her knee up into his groin, hoping his instinct remains if nothing else human does. He bends and lets out a grunt of laughter as if surprised to find that he still cares about such things. At least there's that. It's all she needs to wheel aside and reach beneath the bed.
Those new teeth are growing in him once more, all of them curved and stuffed down his throat, perhaps into his chest as well, wrapped around his heart. He is nothing but fang, inside and out.
She goes right for the ash wood stake and the twice-blessed iron pike, filling each hand. He lets her. She knows that he's letting her, and that perhaps this is the last act of the man he'd once been, fighting the demon. A moment's hesitation so that she might do what she's best at.
But she's wrong, of course, as she remembers that now. She's mistaken each night. He's only allowed her this period of grace so that he might swoop upon her in one lissome pounce.
Her hands tighten on a stake of ash but she's unable to use it as he squirms against her, already sneaking out from under the bed. His muscular forearm holds her down as if preparing for some assertive lovemaking. His mouth slips to her ear and he hisses more words, but she's straining so hard that she can only hear the mad rush of her own desperation.