Grave Danger (40 page)

“
Oh,” she said, watching him as he squirmed on
his stool, keeping her smile in check. “Sorry.” She returned to her
proper position and tried to keep still. Her species wasn’t very
good at keeping still. It was their very nature to move and flow
with the energy and movement of the earth. But she tried really,
really hard because Corrigan was immortalizing on to a canvas. This
was a special moment and she didn’t want to spoil it.

After several more agonizing minutes of silence,
however, she had to talk again. “So you know about Titanic, do
you?”

Corrigan nodded his ascent as he drew the curving
lines that outlined her jaw. He was finding it difficult to get it
just right, not too pointy and not too round.

“
Which, the actual ship or the movies they
made about it? There was even a musical if I’m not mistaken.” He
moved to her hair which flowed almost as if it were suspended in
another time and didn’t adhere to the laws of this world. He liked
running his fingers through it as her hair felt like he was running
his fingers against a living stream that had somehow been
electrically charged sending currents through her to his hand, yet
the currents remained cool instead of hot.

“
The movie obviously,” Clarissa answered,
trying to talk while keeping still as death. Though why people
thought death was still was anyone’s guess. Death was always on the
go. “Why, were you there when the actual ship sank?”

“
I read about it in the circulation papers,
but no, I wasn’t in New York when the Lusitania carried in the
survivors. I am however aware of the movie you’re referring to, one
of many, but as young as you are you’re likely not aware of the
others. So I know about Jack and his Rose and the whole three and
half hour cinematic spectacular that put the two lead characters
into pop culture infamy.” He started her eyes, trying to capture
the perfect slant of them, the dark lashes and the sweep of her
brows. “Helen has requested that we have a family movie night and I
and several others were outvoted when choosing the movie. I fell
asleep when they were changing the tapes. If a movie requires two
VHS tapes to watch someone was too much of a wimp in the editing
department. I got poked awake just before the boat finally keeled
over and went under.”

Corrigan shook his head as if trying to get
the extremely drawn out love story out of his memory cells. “For
days I heard
My heart will go
on
, coming from downstairs. And when it got to be so
much that I knew every damn word I went outside to get away from
it. I found Margaret Ann in the gardens with her portable CD
player, singing loud and off-key the same nauseating tune. I swear
those women wouldn’t shut up about the whole thing for another year
after it came out. By then they had moved on to some other
obsession, I know designed merely to irritate me.”

“
I liked that movie,” Clarissa told him, a
little sad that he didn’t see the beauty of the tragic love story
the way she did. “My friends were obsessed with the Jack character.
They had Leonardo Decaprio posters and calendars and who knows what
other promotional stuff. I have to admit I did have the soundtrack
and I played that Celine Dion song on an endless loop for hours. I
had the movie marquee poster over my bed.” She made an overly
dramatic sigh. “Leo was so cute in that movie, wasn’t he? He was
like the Robert Pattinson of the nineties,” she told him with a
wave of her hand.

“
I have no idea what you’re rambling on about
but can you do it without moving your arms and legs?” He had moved
on now to outlining her figure. It didn’t matter what she was
wearing at the moment, he could put another outfit on her once he’d
started the actual painting process. He just needed to get the
sweep of her waist and rounded hips set perfect with the line of
her legs. Corrigan had placed her slightly turned on her side and
he was wondering now if he shouldn’t have put her fully on her left
side. The pillow he’d stuffed behind her kept her somewhat elevated
in the right position but she had a tendency to move her legs and
arms. She was starting to slide in the opposite direction from
where he’d begun to draw her body which confused him as he’d start
to continue a line that would no longer look the same seconds
later.

“
Oh don’t give me that line,” Clarissa teased
as she once again slide further away from where he’d place her.
“Everyone knows about the vamp people. Even Mrs. Connors knows who
he is except she always calls it the
Twilight Zone
movie. Which is kind of appropriate
because people can go ‘a little nuts’ and enter their own little
obsessive zones when they think someone is making a poor comment
about their vampire friends.”

Corrigan set his sketch pad down for a moment,
coming across the space to where Clarissa was grinning up at him.
He still wore the expression of a man focused on his craft. Putting
his hands under her body he moved his muse back into the proper
position. Brushing his fingers through her hair he bent down to
place a sweet kiss on her lips, pulling back after several seconds
to say against them, “Try not to move, love. I’m almost finished.”
Then he pulled away and went to his seat to continue his work.

Clarissa touched her mouth, holding his kiss in
before putting herself back to where he had placed her. Corrigan’s
eyes continued to swing from her to his sketch book and each time
she would catch that look of unconditional and unpretentious love
revealed in his iridescent blue eyes.

The bonds of her love for him stretched tight around
her heart – his heart. She was sure that he loved her as
irreversibly as she loved him. And even though both their worlds
and those they cared in it were fraught with murder and deceit,
here in this quiet attic it was just them; a man and a woman no
longer a flesh-eater and a bokor ghost.

You will kill him… Kill him….

Chapter 22-

Trueman’s laboratory was located on the first floor
at the back of his house facing the gardens Margaret Ann had built
for him and Debora more than thirty years back. It boasted a
twenty-two foot ceiling with three of the walls stacked high with
built in shelves and made for a large open space. The fourth wall
was made almost entirely of glass and faced the garden.

Late afternoon sun streamed through the stained
glass mosaic windows mixed between panels of frosted glass. The
waning light filtered through the religious gothic images of the
passion of Jesus of Nazareth and modern secular images of fields
and flowering plants which highlighted the odd interior. Long wood
plank tables held various medicinal plants. Flat leaf bilberry bush
and feathery marjoram, along with the aloe Vera plant and ginkgo
balboa as well as wormwood took up much of the space. A potted
Linden tree sat on the floor next to a metal watering can.
Contrasting sharply with the conservatory theme were the harsh and
sterile metal tables and modern laboratory equipment including
several blood staining machines and high powered microscopes that
gave the room a forensic-mad-scientist appearance. Shelves upon
shelves of medical journals and reference books protruding with
scraps of paper used as book marks with more lined in abstract
piles on the floor.

Trueman sat in his leather recliner, an opened book
in one hand and a glass of iced tea in the other. He was wearing
his reading glasses again except this time he had them placed
slightly askance on his slightly unkempt blonde head. He lifted his
head from reading when he heard his brother make a grunting
noise.

Corrigan held the cotton swab firmly against the
bend in his elbow. He watched with a frown as Debora held the
latest blood phlebotomy from him. Once a week, each of them endured
this process of collecting and examining their blood and while it
was done religiously and with good intentions, none enjoyed being a
guinea pig to Trueman and Debora’s experimentations on them.

“
I don’t understand why you’re so difficult to
draw from, Corrigan.” Debora turned her head to the side as she
examined her brothers blood in the light, turning it this way and
that. “Stop grumbling, please. That’s no way for a grown man to
behave. You act like I took an entire pint out of you.”

Corrigan ceased his mutterings about her trying to
drain him out of all his recently obtained blood supply as he
pressed down firmly with the cotton swab to his arm. In a moment it
would stop, but until then if left unchecked even a tiny bleed
could become fatal. Because of this, nature had made the layers of
their epidermis hold a stronger compound of denser tissue that
prevented most tearing made by common accidents, even scratching,
so as to decrease the risks of bleeding out.

Unfortunately that meant normal medical needles and
syringes had a more difficult time pushing through the layers.
Trueman had developed a unique diamond headed tip to his needles to
puncture the skin’s surface so that they could extract or insert
fluids into their system. It was also a very precise puncture wound
which prevented needless injury and the build-up of scar tissue.
Healing time was quick as their tissues consistently regenerated
themselves and even substantial injuries if given the proper care
would work themselves out over several hours contrasting with the
usual days it required in the typical human system.

Deborah did a Wright’s stain and differential of her
brother’s blood, putting it under the scope to have a better look
at his cells. With each of her siblings, her husband and herself,
she would perform a Complete Blood Count to evaluate all cellular
components of the blood and determine the volume of each. Then each
new sample was evaluated against the previous samples. Two
commercial grade refrigerators were set between the stack of
shelves on one wall to store the samples.

After several more seconds Corrigan removed the
stained cotton swab, throwing it into a brightly colored hazardous
waste bucket next to him. He moved his finger over the area where
Debora had taken his blood but finding no puncture wound to his
flesh, only a slight blush to the skin to even hint that she’d
stuck him.

“
He’s not so bad, actually,” Trueman said,
joining the conversation. Placing the glass of tea and book on the
end table next to him he rose from his recliner to join them both
by the lab equipment. He’d set up most of the room for work, but
had included a living room setting out of part of the space.
Because in Trueman’s mind work and leisure didn’t exist too far
apart he always wanted to be near his equipment and plants if
inspiration struck.

“
Xavier has a more difficult time. He’s a
stubborn man, so much so that even his veins refuse to give in most
of the time.” Trueman placed his hand gently on his wife’s back
causing her to look up from the scope. She smiled up at him as she
moved aside to let him have a look.

As her husband was engrossed in focusing the
microscope, Debora returned to Corrigan’s side to go through her
next process of tests and questions she did with each of them.
Debora had been an apprentice of sorts to Trueman since they’d
first come together, their relationship being the longest running
in the family.

Corrigan performed the standard eye roll in his mind
as Debora pulled out from a desk drawer a notebook she had
dedicated solely for information obtained from her tests and
questions of him. Corrigan’s name was written in her precise
copperplate handwriting on the cover of each manual. There was also
a shelf on the wall dedicated to his medical records alone and with
her borderline obsessive organizing nothing was ever forgotten or
misplaced.

“
So,” she began, using her doctor/patient
voice. “How have you been sleeping lately?”

“
Fine,” he said. She made notes on his chart.
It was only the beginning of a serious of questions about his
overall health. And each of them was required by decree from
Ambrose himself to sit patiently and answer all these
questions.

After many more questions, which were each answered
by Corrigan using as few words as possible or simply a nod or shake
of his head, they moved on. Corrigan always felt like he was a
horse or a cow when Debora began looking into his ears and shining
lights in his eyes before insisting that he open his mouth while
she stuck what looked like a Popsicle sticks bloated cousin inside.
When she was finished poking and prodding him she gestured for him
to step onto a portable scale she took out from another drawer.

She made some quiet comments to herself as she was
jotting down her results into his chart. Trueman, who was holding
another notebook full of Corrigan’s charts from some time back,
looked over his wife’s shoulder as she was making her markings into
the new chart. He nodded when she looked up at him and pointed at
something on the chart. But they said nothing to Corrigan.

He left them alone as they talked in hushed tones
and pointed to the two charts punctuating their words with taps of
their identical pens. Corrigan walked over to the Linden tree,
which had only recently been planted. Because of its fast rate of
growth, in a few months it would be too big to remain indoors.

Much of the tree population on the property was made
up of these trees. The stalwart tree was a plant extensively used
in medicinal practices for curing headaches and as a sedative as
well as being ‘rooted’ in the world of mythology. He knew a portion
of the lore of a woman, Philyra. Who after giving birth to a
centaur child, asked the gods to take her humanity from her. They
turned her into a Linden tree. But he couldn’t remember the rest of
the story or whether, after becoming a tree, the woman was
satisfied. He didn’t realize so much time had passed until he heard
his name being called.