Authors: Scott Nicholson
CHAPTER
THREE
Sabrina barely beat the
thunderstorm home after her shift. It was one of those fronts that rolled in
from the coast, storm clouds collecting over the Outer Banks before pushing the
last miles to the mainland. It was the kind of storm that would wreck a
pirate’s galleon—the sky was boiling black, jagged whips of lightning stabbing
down into the sea.
“Fly away home,” she said, as she
closed the door against the tumult.
Magically, her white wings
sprouted from her back, somehow growing through the cotton blouse. She’d
learned fast that natural fiber was the only way to go if she wanted to avoid
embarrassing rips.
She flexed her wings a little,
careful not to tip over Luke’s chess pieces on the coffee table. The wings came
down just below her buns, and when she was naked, the tips felt kind of good
when they swished against her skin. The feathers were softer than those of a
bird, and God had explained they were mostly ornamental, not functional.
The whole image was designed to
suggest flight and transcendence, an ethereal connection between heaven and
earth. It wasn’t like you could have angels shuffling around in combat boots
and hard hats.
She gave the wings a gentle twitch
and lifted off the floor, then flapped softly about the living room, drawing
all the curtains tight. She had few chances to test the wings and she still
hadn’t mastered the subtle art of aerial navigation.
The storm burst. Rain pelted the
windows and thunder shook the cottage. It was too loud for anyone to sleep
through, even the undead.
She half-floated into the bedroom
and alighted next to the shallow-bottomed skiff. It was propped up on four old
wooden crab cages and Sabrina always wondered why the contraption hadn’t
collapsed, especially given their exuberant romps, but Luke said the rocking
was part of the cruise.
She couldn’t argue with that.
Luke had apparently sensed the
darkness through an instinct older than time, for the skiff’s canvas cover was
already cracked about an inch. She tapped lightly. “Honey?”
His muffled, drowsy voice spilled
from the crack. “It’s early.”
“Yeah, but it’s a hurricane.
Darker than a politician’s heart outside.”
Four strong, pale fingers
protruded from the skiff and curled around the edge of the canvas. Just the
sight of his skin sent a little shiver up Sabrina’s spine. There was something
about being denied your lover’s touch that made the yearning all the sweeter.
But his gray cuticles were a
little gross.
He peeled the canvas to one side,
testing the light of the room to make sure it was safe. Old habits were hard to
break. In the gloom, she could barely make out his listless form in the boat’s
interior. Even without a piercing sun to repel him, Luke simply wasn’t a day
person.
“I missed you,” she said.
“You left before I had a chance to
kiss you good-bye.”
“You were out like a light.”
She bent over the side of the
skiff. Luke smiled, still a little groggy, but his eyes were open, the pupils
and irises both solid black. He smelled of sweat, carnations, and dirt, plus
that masculine but faintly decaying odor underneath it all.
Ah hell, no man is perfect.
She leaned in and kissed him. His
lips were as firm, smooth, and cool as polished marble. He responded, though
still a little sluggish, and his mouth worked gently against hers. She could
never get used to his lack of breath, but she didn’t have a lot of room to
criticize, because her breathing was an autonomic reflex left over from her
days as a mortal.
They were quite a pair. She hadn’t
forgotten what it was like to be alive, and Luke hadn’t forgotten what it was
like to be dead.
“Mmm, nice wake-up call,” he
murmured.
“Got room in there for me?”
“Always.”
She climbed over the edge of the
boat. One of her wings brushed against his face. “Careful,” he said. “I’ll have
to pluck you like a chicken.”
She folded her wings behind her
and snuggled against him, relishing the coolness of his body. He was naked, but
he had a thin cotton shroud draped over the lower half of his body. Despite his
pale flesh, his chest was robust and muscular. He’d been turned into a vampire
in the prime of his life, and despite some minor desiccation, he was holding
out just fine.
Really fine.
“I don’t think there’s enough room
for all these clothes,” he said, reaching for the top button of her blouse.
“Do we have time?”
“We have forever.”
That was a good line, and he used
it often. Foreplay, loveplay, and afterplay, he never rushed.
Except, of course, when he needed
to feed.
But they tried not to talk about
that.
“We’re supposed to take the boat
out with Cherry and Roy,” Sabrina said.
Luke’s fingers froze just below
her throat. “When?”
“Tonight, of course.”
He turned away and let his hand
drop against the black velvet lining of the boat. “I’m busy tonight.”
“You told me you were off. Don’t
tell me Commander Hampton called you in.”
“There’s some suspicious activity
off the Banks. The official line is it may be drug shipments from Costa Rica.”
“But you think it might be
something else?”
“I don’t know what I think.”
“You get cold when you don’t know what
you think,” she said, trying once more to interest him in play. She didn’t
think the storm would hold out much longer. The rain was easing off and the
thunder had rolled inland.
She rubbed her hand over his
chest, teasing the taut curves of his abs. She pressed her palm against his
heart and felt its slow beating. Asleep, it might only beat once a minute, and
when awake, it beat about six times a minute. It only accelerated when he was
feeding, fighting, or…the other F word.
Sabrina snuggled against him and
nuzzled his neck, letting her wings brush gently across his skin. It was one of
her favorite maneuvers, the old “turnabout is fair play,” and it usually got a
rise out of him. “You’re the only vampire I know who would join the Coast Guard
Auxiliary,” she murmured.
“It’s the best way to keep my
finger on the pulse,” he said.
“Well, I’ve got a pulse you can
finger,” she said. “That is, if you don’t have anything better to do.”
Distracted, he gazed at the
diminishing storm beyond the window. She wondered what he saw there, and if his
memories haunted him, or if there were so many that they were all jumbled into
one big stew so that no single event of the past could stand out.
Sabrina wondered if she’d be lost
in his memories as well, and then shook her head. At least he had the presence
of mind to cup one of her breasts, although he gently kneaded it like a
distracted kindergartner toying with Play-Doh.
I didn’t get my flesh back for
this kind of treatment.
She pulled away, or at least as
much as she could inside the small boat.
“We need to talk,” she said.
To his credit, he didn’t sigh.
“Look, you’ve got a mission,” she
said. “Duty calls, and all that. The last of the unsung heroes. And that’s sort
of sexy, in a Robert Pattinson kind of way. But I’ve got a mission, too.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, suddenly
sullen in a Robert Pattinson kind of way. “I have to save the world while you
get to save heaven. You’re always trying to one-up me.”
She swatted his muscular chest,
causing her hand to hurt. “No, my darling. I have a much tougher mission than
that.”
“What could be tougher than that?”
“Saving your soul.”
“I don’t have a soul.”
“Exactly. God sent me to Beaufort
because
you
were here. Not just because it’s the probable entry point
for the Gog and Magog.”
“What would God want with a creep
like me?”
“God’s love is generous and
boundless.”
“After all the people I’ve killed?
All the good Christians whose necks I’ve pierced and whose pure, redeemed blood
I sucked into my belly? I can’t respect any God who would have me as a
servant.”
God had acknowledged the task was
daunting. And He’d blessed her with extra assets, similar to the way the
government bought body armor for the soldiers sent into warfare. One never
asked if perhaps they should have just skipped the battlefield altogether.
After all, the armor was already purchased and it would be a shame to waste it.
Plus, God’s armor came with curves
and all the temptations of mortality.
She could roll with it.
“I can see this won’t be easy,”
she said.
“I was doing this long before you
were born. It’s just the way I am.”
Sabrina sat up and moved away from
body contact. She had to fold her wings and legs, but it was possible. “You
never did tell me how you got this way. I might be a little sympathetic.”
He put his hands behind his head.
The thunder rumbled, causing the coffin-boat to tremble, and Sabrina was
annoyed to be wasting a great afternoon of playtime. But a sacred mission was a
sacred mission.
“I’ve never told this to anyone,”
he said. “It’s a little embarrassing.”
I eat confession for breakfast,
doll. Please dish.
She gave an angelic smile.
“If
you can’t trust me, you can’t trust anybody.”
“I’m a lost boy.”
She searched his eyes. Red gleams
danced in the dark of them. She couldn’t tell if he was joking about the 1980s
vampire movie or not. “Right. Like Keifer Sutherland? Or Corey Haim?”
“No, a real lost boy,” he said
vacantly, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
Before she could goad him into
telling more, the room was flooded with a flash of bluish light, causing Luke
to wince in pain. The light vanished in a blink, followed almost immediately by
a deep peal of thunder.
“That was a close one,” Sabrina
said.
She wondered if it was God trying
to get her attention and keep her on the true path. God didn’t appreciate
modern psychology. How could she expect to figure out Luke’s heart and soul if
she couldn’t dig into his mind a little first?
The lightning bolt had zapped Luke
from his vulnerable moment, and Mr. Cool was back. He gave his sexy smirk as the
rain continued its pounding on the roof. His hands touched her shoulders,
strong and demanding, and she resisted only a little.
And then he pulled her close,
feathering his lips across hers, the friction creating the heat his flesh
lacked. She surrendered and parted her lips, and the tip of his tongue touched
hers. She flicked upward and caught the points of his teeth. He was aroused.
“We’d better hurry,” he said. “I
don’t know how long the storm will last.”
“You don’t like to hurry,” she
said. Quickies with the dead didn’t sound all that satisfying.
“I don’t mean ‘us,’” he said. “I
meant tonight.”
“I thought you were on duty.”
“The commander let me off because
it looks like the storm front is passing. There’s a recession, you know, even
for the federal government.”
“What about your all-pervading
sense of doom?”
“If we’re taking the boat out,
I’ll be available, right?”
She hated to ask, but she needed
to know. “You’re not going to feed tonight, are you?”
“Not planning on it.”
His curved canines suggested otherwise.
It wasn’t a dead giveaway that the craving had set it, but it was a
physiological response she’d come to compare with the salivating of a dog.
“Do you need some of my blood to
tide you over?” she asked.
“I couldn’t do that to you.”
A guy who is not a user. The
first one in history. Yeah, right.
“You did it before.”
“That was different. It was just a
love nip. I was helpless. I was…overcome.”
A guy who is overcome. Another
first. All the ones I’ve known have never come enough. They’re undercome.
The rain eased and she sighed,
letting her wings curl around him. He sat up enough to accept the embrace. His
fingers were back at the buttons of her blouse, and she reached down to the hem
of the sheet at his waist.
And the dead shall rise.
“Uh…” he said.
Her eyes were closed and she
relaxed beneath his touch. But his fingers stopped moving.
“What?” she murmured.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to
give you a rain check.”
She opened her eyes and realized
the sun had burned through a crack in the clouds, and the room was filled with
an orange-red glow. The rain trailed off and the silence was intensely loud.
T-Bird squawked and said, “Duck
and cover, duck and cover.”
CHAPTER
FOUR
With hours to kill until sunset,
Sabrina went down to the waterfront, where yachts and sailboats bobbed in the
marinas, signs warned against feeding the seagulls, fat kids with sunburns
begged for ice cream, and the Bent Harpoon welcomed all who were of legal
drinking age or had a passable fake I.D.
Sabrina had made a habit of
visiting the bar almost daily, finding it a much richer source of information
than the local newspapers. Because bars in North Carolina had to sell more food
than alcohol, the Bent Harpoon served up baskets of greasy fries and clam
strips, frozen fish sandwiches, and Cole slaw, all served with a red shrimp
sauce that filled the air with a cloying sweetness.
Or that could have been the vomit.
It all ended up the same anyway.
The place was barely a third full,
with margaritas appearing to be in favor today. A couple of young, well-tanned
construction jocks in wifebeaters looked her over as she strode in. One of them
examined her shoes with flaring nostrils, and Sabrina registered the response
as jealousy. She was relieved they were gay, because she didn’t want to be hit
on this early in the day.
She slid onto her usual stool
beside Cap’n Barney, who turned and squinted at her with one bleary eye. “’Tis
a lurvely mermaid,” he said, in a lousy blend of pirate and Cockney. He sprayed
a little spittle as he spoke.
“Hello, Barney,” she said. “Been
here long?”
“Seven years,” he said, which was
only half true. The joke part was that she’d never been in the place when he
wasn’t on the third stool over from the cash register. On those rare occasions
when he got up to relieve his bladder of massive quantities of beer, the
permanent imprint of his ass was revealed in the aqua vinyl.
“Good thing you don’t need sleep,”
she said.
“I need it bad, I just don’t want
it.” He quaffed from his frothy mug, a little foam sticking to his white
mustache. He wore a blue captain’s cap that matched his eyes, and it sported a
frayed bit of braid as if it might have seen weather at some point.
The bartender came over, a
square-jawed guy with tight curls who looked like he was training for a
decathlon instead of working his way through oceanography school. “What you
having?”
Cap’n Barney slapped a palm on the
maple bar, momentarily stifling the clusters of conversation. “Avast, you
baggywrinkle. Sabrina is a tee totaller. A rolly holer. A holy roller.”
“A Dr. Pepper, please,” Sabrina
said. Cheerwine was the cult soda of the South, but Sabrina found it far too
bubbly for her tastes. Pepsi had been founded in nearby New Bern, but it was
too flat and sugary. She didn’t mind being a pepper, though it wasn’t as
original as the television commercials made out.
“I respect a woman who can stay
sober,” Capn’Barney said as the bartender went to draw the order.
“And I respect a man who can’t,”
she said.
She enjoyed Barney’s company for several
reasons. Most men took her to be Barney’s daughter, which kept away the land
sharks, and anyone who tried to lure her to their table or offer her a rum had
to fight through Cap’n Barney’s bluster and incoherent English. He was a
suitable anchor for the storm, and he held a genuine, uncreepy affection for
her.
But Barney offered another benefit
as well. He was privy to much of the port traffic, from the shrimpers and
charter boats to the larger Coast Guard cutters. Coasties occasionally hung out
at the bar, and Cap’n Barney soaked up the rumors and reports like he soaked up
Corona Lights. Since he was always on call, so to speak, Sabrina could gather
daytime intelligence to pass along to Luke.
The only downside was he tended to
say everything three times.
“How are the fish running?” she
asked.
“Groupers, black sea bass, and
amberjack are running deep. Spanish mackerel for the inlets, and you always got
your croakers.”
Croakers were a common surf and
inlet catch, and the nearby sailing center of Oriental even held an annual
festival to celebrate the noisy fish, although it was mostly an opportunity to
hawk overpriced crafts. Since Sabrina wasn’t an angler, she just used the
opening to get Barney warmed up, although he already seemed to be well lit.
“Good to know what’s fresh,” she
said.
He rolled his eyes, which were
like the clouded blobs of jellyfish torsos. “Lotta boats hitting it right now.
Lotta
boats. Veritable flotillas, I say.”
“Well, it’s that time of year.”
“Cruising the Outer Banks.
Something’s fishy out there, and I don’t mean that to be clever.”
The Outer Banks were a rare
geological formation, a chain of barrier islands that stretched 200 miles off
the North Carolina coast. They were most famous for hosting the Wright
Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, but before that the area had gained a
reputation as the Graveyard of the Atlantic because its ever-shifting shoals
and sudden storms had sent everything from schooners to submarines to the
bottom.
“It’s just tourists,” Sabrina
said, and this was always where a chat with old Barney got interesting, because
he had his own ideas about tourists that made Sabrina wonder why he had such a
keen eye for surveillance. Like he was a watchman of some sort.
“There be tourists, and then there
be visitors,” he said, taking a generous gulp that drained half his mug. “We’re
all tourists in our way, because we’re just passing through and looking. We’re
just a blink of the eye to the oceans.”
“Some of us have been around
awhile,” she said. “You’re practically a coral reef yourself.”
He gave his sea-shanty laugh and
said, “I guess we all get pushed here by different tides. But there’s a kind of
tourist I don’t particularly care for.”
Sabrina looked around the Bent
Harpoon, which had the requisite ensemble of frayed nets, corroded fishing
tackle, and nautical maps covering the tea-colored walls. “And what kind would
that be, Cap’n?”
“Pirates,” he said, and his
rolling eyes stopped in their tracks and settled on her with a firm intensity.
“Privateers and buccaneers. Invaders and raiders.”
Sabrina would have chalked his
words off to the work of the Corona, but his intensity cloaked the jovial old
salt he seemed to play for the general public. God had told her that things
happened for a reason, which she’d shrugged off as a one of those paternal
platitudes you dispensed when sending angels out to do good in the world. She’d
already met her guardian angel today, but who was to say that a person only
needed one guardian?
But if she had more than one
person watching out for her, it must mean this mission was way bigger than
she’d figured.
Thank you, God, for putting so
much trust in me
, she silently prayed with a heavy dollop of sarcasm.
She decided to test him. God had
always been one for testing, so perhaps he’d be proud. “Do you mean the Gog?”
He raised his mug. “Grog?”
“Gog and Magog. Like from the
Bible.”
“I’m not much one for the Bible.
Too many begats for my taste. I prefer a story with a predictable plot, like ‘Treasure Island.’”
So perhaps he wasn’t enlightened.
But that didn’t mean his information wasn’t solid. “These people shipping
around the Outer Banks? What would they be doing? I wouldn’t think there’s much
to plunder out there.”
“It’s mostly national parks land,”
he said. “There are some resort towns farther north, where Cape Hatteras and the lighthouses are. But down here it’s mostly sand. You get charters out
there because people like to fish them, but there’s not much advantage for
commercial shipping.”
“So you think it’s something
else?”
He lowered his voice, although the
background noise was starting to pick up as the drink count mounted. “Like I
said, pirates.”
“We were planning a double date
out there tonight.”
“Are you still seeing the young
gentleman I met a couple weeks back? That Coastie?”
She blushed a little, not sure
whether the captain’s moral sextant would encompass shacking up. “We date
occasionally.”
“He’s a bit pale for a Coastie.”
“He generally works the night
shift.”
Cap’n Barney nodded and drank to
that. “I guess more of the drugs run at night, and with the drinking, some
weekend sailor is more likely to run aground or crack up on the shoals.”
“Maybe we should change our
plans.”
Though Cherry had seemed so eager to go. She could use an adventure,
and it sounds like it wouldn’t hurt her new relationship to spice things up a
little.
“No, I think tonight will be
okay,” Barney said. “Moon’s waxing to full and the storm’s pushed on. A young
lady like you could use a little romantic outing. And, if you’re with a
Coastie, you’re in good hands.
Oh, Cap’n, you don’t know just
how good his hands can be.
“What’s this gentleman’s name
again?” he asked.
“Luke.”
“Bonfire on the beach, a crab
boil, a little acoustic guitar with some Jimmy Buffet songs. Ah, I remember the
days.”
“Luke is more into Mozart.”
The old man emitted a low
argh
of disapproval. “Can’t hardly set a piano out on the beach, can you?”
“The trip’s mostly for my friend.
She works at the Bean Seen.”
“No wonder she wants to get off
the mainland. Being around a bunch of goddanged coffee achievers is sure to
wind anybody’s spinnakers a little too tight.”
“Well, I better go get ready. I’ll
keep an eye out for those pirates.”
“Gog,” he said as she got up to
leave.
“Excuse me?”
“Here there be Gog.” He winked.