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Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
 - Samuel McCord

http://www.amazon.com/RITES-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/

In the French Quarter of the Roaring Twenties, there is a strange night club owner whom society shuns ...

unless their world has become nightmare.

Travel back to the FIRST and listen to Samuel McCord recount a tale of horror, love, sacrifice, and redemption to a young William Faulkner ...

A tale from the mists of America's beginnings in the year 1853.

Meet Meilori Shinseen, her vicious twin Maija, Elu, and the Turquoise Woman for the first time!

FOR FREE!  For a LIMITED TIME.  Want MORE?

Upon getting the FREE kindle book, you can download the AUDIO for a MERE $1.99!

Go back to McCord's beginning ... FOR FREE!

ONLY I AM LEFT TO TELL THE TALE

Show versus Tell --

Alex Cavanaugh mentioned he sometimes struggled with this.  His novels do not show it though. 

However, here is the TELL version of the tale of my prior post to help him and my other friends a bit.

TELL:

I am Elu, Apache diyi. And only I am left to tell the tale of Man, for I exist only in mirrors.

If the White man had merely been content to destroy himself, I would be glad.

But it is the White Man's way to destroy all he touches -- even his entire world.

Where to begin?

Do I begin with the madman who tainted ice cream he gave for free to the children on the streets of Detroit?

The poisoned dessert that turned those children into the walking dead?

No. Instead I will begin with the seven year old Victor Standish.

Abandoned by his mother, the Angel of Death, he sat in a swing in a Detroit playground, misunderstanding completely why she had left him.

As Death, she was Allwheres, Alltimes at once. She could no longer take him with her lest she destroy his sanity.

Being Death's son, Victor unknowingly drew the undead children to him. Showing the largeness of heart that would one day be his undoing, he saved the white girl beside him.

His mother's touch was already removing most of the memories of his wanderings. But though he could not place the face or form of his centaur teacher, Chiron, Victor remembered his teachings:

When surrounded by enemies, seize your sword, thrust up your shield, and find the high ground.

And this Victor did, taking the white girl, Becky, with him, though taunting and herding her.

He found his sword, a fallen baseball bat. He picked up his shield, a discarded garbage can lid.

In the towering child's slide and swing bars, Victor found his high ground. He found his first teacher in free running, the black boy, LeRoy. He found his rage against his deserting mother. He channeled it to fend off the undead horde.

But they were too many.

His rage exploded. Tapping into the power of his mother's blood, Victor screamed for the undead to die. And since he was his mother's son, they did just that.

Above Victor, safe from his death-scream, Becky lowered her slingshot, looking at Victor in wonder.

LeRoy pushed the three unmoving, undead children from the top of the slide. The small white girl in glasses began to shiver from shock.

The enemy was defeated ... for the moment.

Standing a layer of life from Victor, his mother, Death, cried black tears. Her son had proven he could survive without her.

She decided to cast him only on the deadliest streets. Then, though he would never again be by her side, he would always be in her heart and in her sight.

Still, there were other undead children than the ones killed in the playground.

The children's nightmare was not over.

And the End of Man had begun.
***

{Scroll down for the SHOW passage}:

SOME CALL ME THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

My entry into ABNA is

THE BEAR WITH TWO SHADOWS,

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004MDLWD0/ref=docs-os-doi_0


It is based on the tales my half-Lakota mother told me as a child,
while we were trapped in our basement apartment by an ice storm,

while I was desperately ill with pneumonia. So ill she felt I would die. And she did not want me to die in fear but in wonder and awe.

A major character in it wants to talk to you :

Some call me The Turquoise Woman.

Others call me Gaia.

I call you temporary ... a fleeting rash upon my surface. Irritating, viral, and in the end, self-destructive.

Your race is like a tick that will gorge itself until it bursts. Bemused, I watch you scurry along my skin, moaning you are bringing an end to me.

I would laugh if it were not so pathetic. You are merely bringing an end to yourselves. I count the moments. You make my scalp itch.

You think you know what life is. Sad. Do you know what life is?

A firefly's flicker in the night, the breath of a buffalo in winter, a cloud shadow that races across the green grass to lose itself in the blood-red of the sunset.

Do not try to understand me. I look, not only down upon you, but out across the vast glittering sea of eternal night.

The color of my thoughts are the Northern Lights and the reach of them is from horizon to horizon and unto the vastness of the stars.

The electro-magnetic field of my body gave birth to my consciousness long before there were human hands to chisel stone into mute, blind idols or to brush your world in blood on cave walls.

Your only true contribution to me was your language.

Before you crafted words into being, my consciousness was unfocused. I listened with wonder as you spoke to one another, slowly piecing the concept of language together in my thoughts. Through the prism of your languages, my awareness crystalized.

I became aware.

Now, I know a haunted melancholy.

Like a windmill's blades, my thoughts dip into my memories. In misty after-images, I see your fleeting lives walking prayer-soft across my green fields only to fade into the inflamed oblivion of the sunset.

My son, Elu, will survive. Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, I have spirited safely away into a sister dimension.

But Samuel, my sad-eyed, adopted son, will soon die I think. Not at the hands of his life-long enemy, DayStar. But by the two-edged sword of his love for his wife, Meilori.

And that trickster scamp, Victor Standish, he, too, will die. I will miss him, for he, also, will be "consumed" by his love for the unnatural creature called Alice.

You are wondering why I am talking to you?

You are close to my heart as well, for all of you craft with words. So I have come to say seven words to you :

"Goodbye. Die well.

I will miss you."
***
What could be The Turquoise Woman's song to Hibbs, the bear with 2 shadows ... or to some of us :

E is for EXISTENCE sighs THE TURQUOISE WOMAN

You two-leggeds ...

Always you need some challenge.

Today's for some of you it is what E evokes in you.

It evokes in me the word EXISTENCE.

Nothing makes you more aware of the fragility

of existence than a song unfinished.

Here is a secret :

We are all songs unfinished.

We start with names. But what illusions are names.

Some call me Turquoise Woman.

Others call me Gaia. I call all of you temporary ...

Some I call cherished.

Others of you are but a fleeting rash upon my surface.

Irritating, viral, and in the end, self-destructive.

Sadly, your race is like a tick that will gorge itself until it bursts.

Bemused, I watch you scurry along my skin, moaning you are bringing an end to me.

I would laugh if it were not so pathetic.

You are merely bringing an end to yourselves.

I count the moments. You make my scalp itch.

You think you know what life is. Sad. Do you know what life is?

A firefly's flicker in the night,

the breath of a buffalo in winter,

a cloud shadow that races across the green grass to lose itself in the blood-red of the sunset.

Do not try to understand me.

I look, not only down upon you,

but out across the vast glittering sea of eternal night.

The colors of my thoughts are the Northern Lights

and the reach of them is from horizon to horizon and unto the vastness of the stars.

The electro-magnetic field of my body gave birth to my consciousness

long before there were human hands to chisel stone into mute, blind idols

or to brush your world in paint on cave walls.

Your only true contribution to me was your language.

Before you crafted words into being, my consciousness was unfocused.

I listened with wonder as you spoke to one another,

slowly piecing the concept of language together in my thoughts.

Through the prism of your languages, my awareness crystalized.

I became aware.

Now, I know a haunted melancholy. Like a windmill's blades, my thoughts dip into my memories.

In misty after-images, I see your fleeting lives walking soft like prayers across my green fields only to fade into the inflamed oblivion of the sunset.

My son, Elu, will survive.

Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, I have spirited safely away into a sister dimension.

But Samuel, my sad-eyed, adopted son, will soon die I think.

Not at the hands of his life-long enemy, DayStar. But by the two-edged sword of his love for his wife, Meilori.

And that trickster scamp, Victor Standish, he, too, will die. I will miss him, for he, also, will be "consumed" by his love for the unnatural creature called Alice.

You are wondering why I am talking to you?

You are close to my heart as well, for all of you craft with words.

So I have come to say seven words to you :

"Live well. Soon I will miss you." ***

99TH PAGE BLOGFEST ENTRY in addition to the No fear entry_SEASON OF MIST/NIGHT OF DEATH_NO FEAR BLOGFEST ENTRY

I thought I'd post an entry to the 99TH PAGE BLOGFEST, too :
http://hddodson.blogspot.com/2011/01/99th-page-blogfest.html {Thanks, Holly}

It is from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE when Samuel McCord is walking through the Katrina devastated landscape of Tulane with his best friend, the vampire priest, Renfield :

With the soft voice of twilight, ghost music sang in my memory. It was accompanied by the chorus of the whispers of the wind from the listening sky. I closed my eyes. New Orleans was timeless, especially to me with the blood of Death in my veins. My transformed eyes only told me the truth, and the truth was not what I wanted to see. So I closed my eyes, and for a moment the truth was what I wanted it to be.

Meilori was back in my arms, supple and vibrant, the peach velvet of her cheek nestled against mine. She pulled back to murmur "Beloved."

Slanted eyes looked up into mine, seeming like jade quarter moons waiting to rise. Her smile was a promise of wicked delights to come in the evening hours before us. And my heart quickened.

Her hand lightly squeezed my gloved one. Her head bent forward, and soft lips tickled my ear. And we were dancing, dancing as if our bodies were the wind given life. It had taken me a hundred years, mind you, but I had learned to be a damn fine dancer. The firm body in my arms had been ample incentive.

Some moments lose their way and grope their way blindly back from the past into the present.

Such a moment swept me up now. Meilori and I were dancing across this very grass. I had paid a prince's ransom to pry King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band out of Tulane's old gymnasium to play out here under the stars. In my mind, I could hear young Louis Armstrong on cornet, see the pleased faces of the other dancers stepping lightly all around us, and hear Meilori's low laughter.

Renfield rasped beside me, "Sam, are you doing this?"

"What?"

I opened my eyes and went very still. The speechless shades of a long-gone night whirled and wheeled all around us. That long-ago evening was replaying itself before our eyes.

Renfield and Magda were laughing as they danced beside Meilori and me.

Renfield sighed, "I'd forgotten how your face looked happy."

I looked at my ghostly double, envying him the sheer delight in his eyes. "I'd forgotten how it felt."

The sound of my words settled an old score with truth, and the evening shades slowly faded from sight. I shivered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Renfield look wistfully at the disappearing Magda in his own double's arms. I sighed. Some truths were best seen only by starlight.


Here is my entry for Dominic's NO FEAR BLOGFEST :
http://www.dominicdemattos.blogspot.com/2011/01/no-fear-blogfest.html

{This is from the 3rd novel in the Victor Standish series, SOMETIMES THERE'S NO VICTOR. It is a re-working of an earlier post here that I liked so much that I enlarged and added depth to it as a part of my new novel.

Those of you who liked my Zombie Playground entry for Misty Waters might be interested to know that I have used a re-working of it as the prelude to my 2nd Victor novel, VICTOR'S NOT JUST MY NAME. Becky and Glasses also turn up as characters towards the end of the book, too!}


It was All Saints Day, and my throbbing body hinted I might be close to joining those saints in their pearly clouds.

I thought about all those old Testament saints : pillars of salt, rivers of blood, skies of fire, angels of death.

I used to think those tales sounded so outlandish ... until New Orleans when my life took a sharp turn into the the Old Testament. Maybe these were the Last Days?

Or maybe the World was always more than we suspected ... until the bottom opened up beneath our startled feet.

A black mist with threads of burning silver flowed around me worriedly. I caught the perfume of apricots. I smiled despite the pain. It died a quick death.

Elu husked from the mirror beside my bed, "I need you to come and die, Standish."

Never my best bud, Elu had increasingly become meaner of late. I swung with a grimace of agony to the side of the bed. "Let me get my boots on, Elu."

He grunted, "Do not even think of calling for help."

Bending to tie my hiking boots, I said loud, "Wouldn't dream of it."

Under my breath, I whispered to the agitated mists, "Like at Ada's. Remember?"

Memory must have served correctly for the mist was suddenly gone, and my chest felt full to overflowing.

I staggered up and walked into the misty prison of Elu's mirror world. I shivered. Like him, it had grown colder of late.

The Apache shaman, Elu, studied me like a bad meal he was being forced to eat. "You can barely walk, boy."

"Yeah, well, Trick of Treat was mostly trick."

I waved absently at the billowing clouds of thick mist all around us and smiled wide,

"But it was worse for Empress Theodora and her pet bear, Strasser."

Elu looked like he was smelling something bad. Must have been his curled upper lip. "They were only Whites."

"White 'revenants,' Ton--"

A corded hand covered my mouth and squeezed hard. "Never use that name in front of me!"

I muffled, "Guut ya, Aye-lu."

He let go and waved angrily to his left, making the mists go crystal-clear. I looked and my heart sank.

"Oh, crap."

Elu's window out of his prison, the Mirror World, showed a rocky slope of a jagged desert mountain and

... a very roughed-up Abigail Adams ... surrounded by ... I counted, getting more depressed as I went ... seven Apaches.

The cloud slipped like a dropped veil from the face of the moon. Its pale light struck fire from the long, sharp canine teeth of the Apache revenants ... think vampires on crack but without the morals.

The elegantly dressed leader of all the white American revenants was tied to a stake of all things.

I sighed, "First, Theodora. Now, this. Jeez, Elu, is she trying to commit suicide?"

His dried-apricot face went sad. "Yes, I believe she is."

I went stiff. "Well, we're not letting that happen. She's gotta give Alice away when we get married."

The fullness inside me bristled, and Elu arched an eyebrow. "Have you even asked the ghoul yet?"

"Hey," I said, gesturing to my chest. "This is me we're talking about. Who could say no?"

The fullness bristled more, and I sighed, "Besides, Elu, you and I both know I'm never going to make it out of my teens."

Elu depressingly nodded. "Yes. But you need to die soon so that Dyami may live."

My heart joined the Titanic. "Captain Sam?"

"Dyami!"

I made a mental note to myself : In front of Elu lose the "Captain Sam" and keep the scalp.

"Why soon?"

"Your weakness distracts Dyami and makes his enemies think he is weak as well."

"So you want me to go rescue Abby so that I can die?"

"Yes."

I smiled wide. "Well, why didn't you say so? Of course, I'll go."

As he eyed me warily, I dropped the smile from my face. "And then, I'll be back to whip your ass ... Tonto."

His fingers actually bristled in flames. Jeez. What was he?

Invisible hands seized me and hurled me through the crytalized fog. I hit stony ground with a stumbling, awkward attempt to keep from falling on my face in front of seven Apache revenants.

I thrust out my arms in a flourish. "Tada! Abby, you're rescued."

Abigail's mouth dropped, "Standish, are you insane?"

"People keep asking me that."

I eyed the Apache leader, who waved his men back, and smiled at him. "Go figure."

My heart became as cold as his eyes. Jeez. I recognized him from the history books. Geronimo. Great. It kept getting better and better.

Like slates of rock scraping against one another, Geronimo asked, "Why are you here?"

I nodded, remembering what Captain Sam wrote in his journals of Apaches. They respected only strength, sneered at weakness. "Show no fear" had been his words of advice. Yeah, right.

The Apaches blurred, then re-formed feet from where they had originally stood. I was no match for them in speed. I saw the moonlight gleam wet from their bloody fangs. I was no match for their strength.

I smiled crooked. I'd just have to cheat.

I went stiff. A woman was staked on the ground. She was all but dead.

Geronimo smiled cruel at me. Bad mistake. I was Death's son. To kill someone near me was to bring Mother to my side.

I whispered low, "Mother, end her pain."

There was a movement by the poor tortured woman. I saw a flicker of Mother, tall, skeletal in tattered black robes. The moaning stopped. Mother was gone. I smiled so sad it tasted of salt. Mother was gone but so was the woman's pain.

Mother was Allwheres, AllTimes, all at once. I tapped into the power of her echo, though blood seeped from both nostrils. I appeared right in front of the coward.

I muttered to myself, 'All right, Victor, time to earn that reputation of yours.' I gave him a wolf's smile.

"Well, Elu thinks he sent me here to die."

Geonimo's eyes narrowed. "Why would he do that?"

He blurred to rip out my throat as I knew he would. I sent myself right next to Abigail. She jerked in surprise. I winked up at her.

I edged closer to Abigail and flashed a gypsy smile. "He's jealous of me."

Standing right by her stake, I gestured grandly to myself. "Can you blame him?"

Geronimo looked like he was about to speak my death sentence, and I hastily said, "Of course, he wants you dead, too."

He barked a harsh laugh. "He sends a boy to kill me. I am so afraid."

I pulled myself up as tall as I got, the fullness growing heavy inside me.

"I killed an Old One when I was twelve. I outran the Soyoko and rubbed their noses in their clumsiness this August. And Empress Theodora and Major Strasser are a little worse for wear from this Halloween."

Geonimo gave an Oscar-winning look of contempt to Abigail.

"Why do you need me and my men for your war against Empress Theodora when you have this great warrior?"

Abigail glared down at me as if I had just sunk her great scheme. Yeah, like she wasn't already tied to a stake to greet the dawn when I got here.

Stroking Abigail's arm and stopping at her wrists, I turned to Geronimo.

"Well, she doesn't want this widely known, but ever since I got a grip on her corset at Halloween, she's been sweet on me -- doesn't want me to be in harm's way and all."

(Of course that hand had been there to keep her from falling flat on her face in front of Theodora but Chief Long-In-The-Tooth didn't have to know that.)

Abigail husked, "Standish, if my hands weren't tied ...."

"Ah, no kisses in front of these guys, all right. I get embarassed easy."

The cruel smile dropped from Geronimo's thin lips. "You have been amusing. Now, you die."

I held up the cords that once held Abigail helpless (hey, Harry Houdini was my teacher.)

"You really want to dance this dance, Chief?"

He snorted, "You two can barely stand."

My own smile dropped. "You've forgotten the first rule of hunting : never get inside the cage with the wolf."

His body blurred. He stood right in front of me, his fangs becoming longer. "You are outnumbered."

Fear made a jackhammer of my heart. But I looked at the tortured corpse of the woman. He was a coward. And even if it killed me, I'd spit in his fangs.

I shook my head. "No. You are."

The heaviness flowed as mist from my chest to reform into Alice in her short gothic Lolita outfit. She smiled with her own sharp teeth.

When someone like Elu invites me to his deadly Mirror World, I just naturally think of having an ace up my sleeve or the ghostly ghoul, Alice, inside my chest.

"Oh, Victor, you sweetheart. You know how much I like Native food."

Geronimo was only a foot away. There was no way he was getting out of this alive, or as alive as the undead got, if things got ugly.

He husked, "A ...."

"Hey, that's my ghoul friend you're about to call names, Chief. Now, we can either be friends, or you can be spare ribs. Your choice."

And that is how Abigail got her Apache warriors, and Geronimo became my ... well, his place in line to take my scalp is right behind Elu's. Like I should worry. It's a long damn line.
***

***
And for those of you wondering what gothic Lolita fashions look like, here is a video (remember Alice looks thirteen like Victor, and though she is ... ah, a bit older, Victor is her first love.)

GYPSY'S TALE : YOU CALL THIS SAFE?

{"Now, that's entertainment!"
- Vlad the Impaler.}

{Samuel Clemens, ghost here.

Roland took refuge in the fictional world his Lakota blood made real, giving his cat, Gypsy, to Marlene for safekeeping.

I could have told the boy : never trust a beautiful blonde. She dumped the poor critter with the mysterious Elu in the Mirror World.

This is Gypsy's story in the critter's own words.} :


That blonde alley cat hadn't fooled me. She hadn't dumped me here in Mirror World for my safety. She wanted Food Guy all to herself. I was going to find him ... and her. Then, I'd set that two-legged cat straight.

But first I had a situation to take care of.

Slit eyes the size of windows glared at me. I glared back. After all, I was Gypsy, warrior princess, granddaughter of Bast herself. So what if the Sphinx of Thebes outweighed me by a ton or two? I had her on agility. And good looks.

If she didn't let go of that human ... what was his name? Oh, yes, Elu. If that Sphinx didn't let go of Elu, I was going to get all Sith on her ample rump.

He glared at me, too. What was his problem?

"It's all your fault, you furry rat," he snapped at me.

"What? My fault? So I unflipped the carrier latch. Big furry deal. I haven't been to the outskirts of Hell in ages. So I took my chance. It's not my fault you let Fang-Face sneak up on you?"

I wrinkled my muzzle. "Some fearsome Apache you are. Just how do let two tons of Ugly sneak up on you anyway?"

The Sphinx narrowed her eyes and rumbled, "Did you just call me Ugly?"

"Yeah, Mammary Girl, I did."

I was making fun of her so she didn't catch on to the fact that she scared the ever-loving piss out of me. I looked up at the towering bulk of her. I smiled wide, freezing it into place from sheer terror.

She was a sphinx. An honest to Egypt sphinx. The simple sentence doesn't do her justice.

The leathery rustle of her wings. The hellsky striking fire from her fangs. Me sceaming like a little kitten at the sight of her. That would do her justice. Not that I screamed mind you.

I have my reputation to think of.

I tried to think of a worse fix I had been in and couldn't. A living, breathing, fang-bearing, claw-extending sphinx was towering over me.

Her huge body, though the size of an elephant, looked like a lion's. Except for the giant eagle wings. She held a struggling Elu in one clenched paw. She sneered down at him with the head of a woman the size of a small boulder. But her teeth weren't those of a woman's.

They were like a lion's, long and sharp as the comfort of politicians. I watched gloomily as the muscles rippled under her golden fur like knotted ropes under a living canvas. Her claws oozed out longer and dug into the black sands as if in anticipation of ripping away my flesh.

"You dare call me Mammary Girl?," the Sphinx husked.

I forced a yawn. "You see any other mammaries dragging the sand?"

"My breasts are not! They are round and firm!"

"What century are we talking about, toots?"

With a roar of rage, she lunged at me. She was as agile as a boulder and about as bright. I raced forward and ducked under her stomach. There. Right under her belly button.

I wasn't thinking damage. I was thinking tickle. Which I did. She curled up laughing in an uncontrollable fit of giggles.

Ever hear a ten ton Sphinx giggle? Nightmare time believe me. Elu was still clutched in her now tightening fist. Well, so much for that plan. His dried apricot face was turning all kinds of neat shades of blue.

"What was your stragedy in that?," he gasped.

I faked surprise. "Stragedy - smatagedy. I'm just having fun."

"I'll show you fun, rat," roared the Sphinx, spinning around to lunge at me.

Two could play that game. Angelina Jolie was doddering compared to my moves. I scrambled up the sloping face of the boulder to my right, sparks flying from my claws. I leapt onto the broad back of the screaming Sphinx.

"Ride 'em, CowCat," I yowled.

She bucked me off before I could take another breath. I flipped in the air and landed all Jedi-like on the sands in front of her.

"That was fun! Want to do it again?"

Her slit eyes narrowed. "Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?"

"The granddaughter of Bast actually, Sag-Breasts."

The Sphinx roared to the hellsky of the mirror world, then husked, "I laugh at Ba---"

Lightning sliced the insane sky and rasping thunder actually shook the sands beneath my paws.

"Ah, Sand-Ho, I'd cool it on any badmouthing ancient Egyptian forces of nature, were I you."

The Sphinx looked uneasily at the darkening skies, then turned back to me. "If you would have this human unharmed, you must first answer my riddle."

"Hey, not so fast there, Two Ton. You have to earn the right to ask the granddaughter of Bast a riddle by answering one yourself."

Thunder rolled like an angry chorus of bulls above us, and the Sphinx sighed, "And if I fail to answer your riddle?"

I shrugged lazily. "Then, you hand me the human unharmed and leap off the cliff."

The Sphinx roared so that my ears rang, and I made a face. "Too much, huh?"

"All right, then you just leap off the cliff."

"What?," shouted both Elu and the Sphinx.

"Just joking," I snickered.

The Sphinx growled, "Fool of a cat, there isn't even a cliff."

I nodded to the new fixture of landscape. "There wasn't until you cracked smart about Grandmother. She takes things like that personal." (Which is what I'd been hoping.)

I nodded to Elu. "You can't answer, you just give me the human unharmed. Deal?"

She looked like she wanted to eat the lips off my beautiful, furry face but instead grumbled, "Agreed. Ask your riddle. And be fast with it. The aroma of your flesh hungers my belly."

And it must have. I heard her stomach rumble.

To stall for time to think of a decent, hell, even an indecent riddle, I clapped my two front paws together, "Oh, goody. A command performance."

"Riddle or die!"

I blew out my cheeks, thought, and thought some more. The Sphinx began to growl and a riddle Grandmother used to ask me at breakfast time came to me, and I purred :

"In marble walls as white as milk,

Lined with a skin of softest silk,

Within a fountain crystal clear,

A golden apple does appear,

No doors are there to this stronghold,

But Man breaks in to steal the gold."


I flashed the Sphinx a smile. "What is it?

"What is what?," she shrilled like a granite wall shearing in two.

"What am I describing in my riddle?"

"You spoke nonsense words!"

"This coming from a riddle-asking fool? Shame on you."

"There is no answer. Your flesh and this human's are mine!"

"An egg, flesh-breath. An egg. Yeah, not so easy on the receiving end of a riddle is it?"

"You cheated! And so you --"

She started to lunge when sand-stinging winds swirled all around her and thunder rumbled loud and long. The Sphinx screamed, her claws cutting ruts in the stone beneath her. But the winds still bore her along like a scrap of paper. She struggled for all the good it did her. She was forced along by the fury of the winds.

Right over the cliff.

"Elu!"

I heard a chuckle from where the Sphinx had dropped him in her efforts to stop herself being pushed over the cliff's edge.

"So you were worried about me, cat."

"Yeah, well don't let it get out. I have my reputation to uphold."

I padded to the cliff's edge and looked over. Ugggh. I made a face.

"No more lasagna for me."

I looked over to Elu. "Speaking of which ... I wonder how Food Guy is doing?"
********************

SEASON OF MIST/NIGHT OF DEATH

I don't know about you, but I've missed Victor Standish,

who can get into more trouble in less time than a Black Panther at a Klan meeting.

So here is the snippet from THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH called "Season of Mist/Night of Death" :


Elu studied me like a bad meal he was being forced to eat. "You can barely walk, boy."

"Yeah, well, Trick of Treat was mostly trick."

I waved absently at the billowing clouds of thick mist all around us and smiled wide,

"But it was worse for Empress Theodora and her pet bear, Strasser."

Elu looked like he was smelling something bad. Must have been his curled upper lip. "They were only Whites."

"White REVENANTS, Ton--"

A corded hand covered my mouth and squeezed hard. "Never use that name in front of me!"

I muffled, "Guut ya, Aye-lu."

He let go and waved angrily to his left, making the mists go crystal-clear. I looked and my heart sank.

"Oh, crap."

Elu's window out of his prison, the Mirror World, showed a rocky slope of a jagged desert mountain and

... a very roughed-up Abigail Adams ... surrounded by ... I counted, getting more depressed as I went ... seven Apaches.

The cloud slipped like a dropped veil from the face of the moon. Its pale light struck fire from the long, sharp canine teeth of the Apache REVENANTS.

The elegantly dressed leader of all the white American revenants was tied to a stake of all things.

"First, Theodora. Now, this. Jeez, Elu, is she trying to commit suicide?"

His dried-apricot face went sad. "Yes, I believe she is."

I went stiff. "Well, we're not letting that happen. She's gotta give Alice away when we get married."

The fullness inside me bristled, and Elu arched an eyebrow. "Have you even asked the ghoul yet?"

"Hey," I said, gesturing to my chest. "This is me we're talking about. Who could say no?"

The fullness bristled more, and I sighed, "Besides, Elu, you and I both know I'm never going to make it out of my teens."

Elu depressingly nodded. "Yes. But you need to die soon so that Dyami may live."

My heart joined the Titanic. "Captain Sam?"

"Dyami!"

I made a mental note to myself : In front of Elu lose the "Captain Sam" and keep the scalp.

"Why soon?"

"Your weakness distracts Dyami and makes his enemies think he is weak as well."

"So you want me to go rescue Abby so that I can die?"

"Yes."

I smiled wide. "Well, why didn't you say so? Of course, I'll go."

As he eyed me warily, I dropped the smile from my face. "And then, I'll be back to whip your ass ... Tonto."

His eyes actually shot flames. Jeez. What was he?

Invisible hands seized me and hurled me through the crytalized fog. I hit stony ground with a stumbling, awkward attempt to keep from falling on my face in front of seven Apache revenants.

I thrust out my arms in a flourish. "Tada! Abby, you're rescued."

Abigail's mouth dropped, "Standish, are you insane?"

"People keep asking me that."

I eyed the Apache leader, who waved his men back, and smiled at him. "Go figure."

My heart became as cold as his eyes. Jeez. I recognized him from the history books. Geronimo. Great. It kept getting better and better.

Like slates of rock scraping against one another, Geronimo asked, "Why are you here?"

I muttered to myself, 'All right, Victor, time to earn that reputation of yours.' I gave him a wolf's smile.

"Well, Elu thinks he sent me here to die."

Geonimo's eyes narrowed. "Why would he do that?"

I edged closer to Abigail and flashed a gypsy smile. "He's jealous of me."

Almost to her stake, I gestured grandly to myself. "Can you blame him?"

Geronimo looked like he was about to speak my death sentence. "Of course, he wants you dead, too."

He barked a harsh laugh. "He sends a boy to kill me. I am so afraid."

I pulled myself up as tall as I got, the fullness growing heavy inside me.

"I killed an Old One when I was twelve. And Empress Theodora and Major Strasser are a little worse for wear from this Halloween."

Geonimo gave an Oscar-winning look of contempt to Abigail.

"Why do you need me and my men for your war against Empress Theodora when you have this great warrior?"

Abigail glared down at me as if I had just sunk her great scheme. Yeah, like she wasn't already tied to a stake to greet the dawn when I got here.

Stroking Abigail's arm and stopping at her wrists, I turned to Geronimo.

"Well, she doesn't want this widely known, but she's sweet on me -- doesn't want me to be in harm's way and all."

Abigail husked, "Standish, if my hands weren't tied ...."

"Ah, no kisses in front of these guys, all right. I get embarassed easy."

The cruel smile dropped from Geronimo's thin lips. "You have been amusing. Now, you die."

I held up the cords that once held Abigail helpless (hey, Harry Houdini was my teacher.)

"You really want to dance this dance, Chief?"

He snorted, "You two can barely stand."

My own smile dropped. "You've forgotten the first rule of hunting : never get inside the cage with the wolf."

He stepped closer, his fangs becoming longer. "You are outnumbered."

I shook my head. "No. You are."

The heaviness flowed as mist from my chest to reform into Alice in her short gothic Lolita outfit. She smiled with her own sharp teeth.

When someone like Elu invites me to his deadly Mirror World, I just naturally think of having an ace up my sleeve or the ghostly ghoul, Alice, inside my chest.

"Oh, Victor, you sweetheart. You know how much I like Native food."

Geronimo was only a foot away. There was no way he was getting out of this alive, or as alive as the undead got, if things got ugly.

He husked, "A ...."

"Hey, that's my ghoul friend you're about to call names, Chief. Now, we can either be friends, or you can be spare ribs. Your choice."

And that is how Abigail got her Apache warriors, and Geronimo became my friend ... well, kind of.
***

***
And for those of you wondering what gothic Lolita fashions look like, here is a video (remember Alice looks thirteen like Victor, and though she is ... ah, a bit older, Victor is her first love.)

WHERE NO WIND STIRS BUT HATE_my HAPPY HALLOWEEN TALE

Patricia Timms-McGehee (http://gypsyrozpoetry.blogspot.com/ )

and I were exchanging emails about DreamTime Friday morning. Our talk sparked my memory of this short story, DARK WATERS.

My best friend, Sandra, prompted me to post it, despite its length, saying it touched her heart and birthed one too many nightmares. So here it it :



It is 1848.
The man with death in his veins, Samuel McCord, has followed 12 year old Sammy Clemens into his nightmare, for he senses the boy is the prey of a supernatural killer. We join Samuel inside the boy's nightmare :


It was on the far side of an apple orchard. I drew in the smell of the fruit. It might have been winter in the waking world, but I had a hunch it was always spring about these parts for Sammy.

From the nearest slave cabin a figure appeared in the open doorway.

Tall, muscular, his dark face strong and wise and kind. Only with the farthest stretch of language could you call the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which he wore clothes.

I hung my head. How could I call myself a lawman and let this evil go on around me?

The man called out to Sammy, his voice deep and rolling like the endless Mississippi.

“Sammy! Boy, don’t you never go to sleep? I been waiting and waiting for you. You in a heap of trouble.”

Sammy scampered right up to him, his arms outstretched, and hugged the huge man.

“Aw, Uncle Dan’l, I’m always in trouble. You know that.”

Daniel pushed the boy away gently. “This here is haunt trouble, Sammy.”

The man snagged the boy’s right ear and squeezed til Sammy danced in place.

“It’s out dere right now! You’s in terrible bad trouble.”

That got his attention. “It? What kind of it?”

“The Hunger, boy.”

“What in tarnation kind of name is that?”

“The onliest name I knows for it. Dat’s what my grandma called it. And it’s fierce evil, Sammy. It’s what got ahold of your Pa. And I ain’t strong enough to protect you -- not even here.”

A cold, dank breeze suddenly swirled all around the slave quarters, and a voice of winter hate breathed from everywhere and nowhere, “Especially here, slave.”

My stomach coiled tight like a rattler. A stillness fell on the night. Behind me an owl hooted far off in the woods. Death was coming. And she was hungry.

Sammy stiffened. “Uncle Dan’l, who was that?”

“Her. It was her.”

Sammy was about to say something else, but another sound cut him off.

The creaking whirr of a spinning wheel. One not recently oiled from the sound of it. And laughter, long, shrill peals, without a shred of sanity clinging to them.

But it was the rattling clatter of the spinning wheel that seemed to be getting to Sammy more than the souless laughter. Though, truth to tell, both were unnerving to me, like fingernails against a slate board.

DreamTime was a dark place. It held its secrets close. None knew them all. I knew a few. A very few.

But a brave slave and a terrified boy depended upon me.

I drew the shadows in upon myself like a blanket of night and watched, biding my time. Nothing. Only the screech of the spinning wheel. I turned my eyes towards the sound.

Electric blue mists thinned a dozen feet away. But deep within me, I got the sense of despair and hate and undying hunger.

No one sat at the wheel. It seemingly spun of its own accord. And with its own mad purpose.

Long tendrils of glowing icy blue mists were being sucked up one side of the wheel.

There they spun over and over again, slowly spewing out the other end into a billowing, tall column.

As the three of us watched, me in the shadows, Daniel and Sammy outlined by the moon, the column became a form of ---

Not a woman. Not a creature. Both. Neither. She flickered in the mottled moonlight, her shape changing constantly, never the same, never quite sane.

A sad-eyed blonde girl, whose left cheek sprouted bright white bone.

An old Negro woman, her face mostly rotted except for eyes full of hate.

An Indian mother, face all screwed up with terrible grief, holding a small cloth bundle.

The form changed yet again. Something not human, not insect, but mixed in a way that the mind could not forget though it screamed to do just that.

Bristling tendrils above a plated head and luminous eyes that were dark water where no wind stirred but the breath of hate.

A being both terrible and beautiful beyond any singing of it. Those unhuman eyes locked on Sammy, who clutched Daniel’s left arm.

The figure changed one last time. Growing smaller, it sent off black tendrils flowing out from it like the wake of a stone tossed into the sea.

I watched the blossoming dogwood wither in curling crisps under the misty tide. Sammy sucked in a breath at this new incarnation of the hunger.

“Laura,” breathed the boy, his eagle eyes glazing.

It was a lovely little blue-eyed blonde with long plaited hair who stood beckoning to the enraptured boy.

The powder-blue summer frock billowed out from a wind that none of us could feel. The young girl held out her slender arms in welcome.

Daniel held him back from rushing forward. “No, Sammy. No! Dat ain’t Laura Hawkins. Lord, no. Dat’s still --”

“Hold your tongue, slave!”

The voice was of a little girl. The tone was of a monster. But Sammy only heard the one and not the other.

“Let me go, Uncle Dan’l! Can’t you see --”

“I see the haunt what killed your Pa. And I won’t let you die like him.”

“Won’t let? Slave, you have no power here.”

Daniel stood straight and tall. “Here I be free, you haunt. You hear? Free!”

The face of the girl grew long as did her body, stretching into something neither human nor insect nor even animal.

The Hunger’s voice was cornered black with fungus,

“Free? There is no free. Not for you. Never for you. Soon it will be dawn, and your master will drag you back whether you would or not. Free? I would laugh were it not so pathetic.”

I saw Daniel’s face crumble in like the crest of a pie whose weight was too much for the emptiness within. His shoulders sagged down with the burden of that great emptiness. Something snapped inside me. The voice of caution still said wait.

But I just couldn’t. No man knew his hour. And this might be mine. But I wouldn’t let those words be Daniel’s epitaph. I just damn well wouldn’t.

Oddest thing. As I walked out of the shadows I could have sworn I heard the sad wailing of a Spanish guitar out in the night. Everyone froze, and I spoke.

“Don’t make me spank you, ma'am.”

“Capt. Sam!,” cried Sammy, then drew back, his fingers to his mouth.

I sighed. Here in DreamTime, my true nature peeked a bit more out of the shadows. And Sammy had seen it. I suddenly was mad, clear through mad. I wanted done with this. Good and done.

“You!,”spit the re-forming hunger.

I nodded. “You know who I am. You know what I can do. Don’t make me do it.”

I flicked my eyes to Daniel. “Bastards can put chains on your body. But only you can put them on your mind. Don’t let her sucker you.”

A hissing turned my head. Damn. It had come, not from the still changing form in front of me, but from the spinning wheel.

I caught something for a moment. I let my eyes go out of focus a bit. There. Again.

The wheel had moved. Or rather a part of it that should have been stiff wood. Were it unliving. And then it came to me.

The body in front of me was no more the hunger than the web was the spider. And with the thought, the churning wheel blurred in my sight becoming even more indistinct.

But I made out the mottled form of a strange creature. What little I could make of it made my mind want to cringe and scream.

Though the woman spun by the hunger might not be the creature itself, still like the spider’s web, it was connected to it. And that was all my right hand needed. I stepped so that my body blocked my right side from Sammy’s view.

I suddenly pulled up short. Most folks die in the quicksand of their own making. They rush in. They assume. They make a stupid mistake. They die.

I had already rushed in. I tried to back off the mark a bit. The hunger killed. But was it necessarily evil?

Was it past dealing with? Hell, why not make at least a stab at ending this without death?

“No one has to die tonight.”

The woman of mist was now as tall as me. Her long hair a hot sunset. Her dress a caress of black satin, plunged deep down in front. She flung back her living waterfall of hair.

“It is how I live. How you live.”

“But we can pass by death tonight.”

Eyes no longer remotely human stabbed into me. “Why?”

“Because there is more to life than death.”

“Not for me. I am the last of my kind. And those maggots behind you are an insult to the memory of beings they, and you, are not fit to touch with your shadows.”

I nodded. It came down to that then.

She smiled with needled teeth.

“You understand then? Good. But your death should have at least the same semblance of pleasure that the whelp’s father enjoyed. Come, let me embrace you.”

“No!,” cried Sammy. “Pa was a good man. He wouldn’t hug no shameless hussy like you.”

The hunger sneered, “Wrong, maggot. He rushed willing into my embrace, his despair finally forgotten. And his first words were those of lust fulfilled.”

She smiled smugly. “His last were not so pleased, of course.”

“You monster!,” swore the boy, who would have rushed the woman if Daniel hadn’t held him back.

“You cage and eat your own. You are the monsters.”

“I ain’t no monster!”

The hunger fixed him with her glittering eyes. “I choose my prey quite carefully, boy."

I sighed, “Be that as it may, neither Sammy nor Daniel die tonight.”

“And you?”

“Well, I’m a mite partial to my own hide too. So let’s just walk off this dance floor all of us in one piece, shall we?”

“I think -- not!”

She was fast. Mighty fast. But she had preyed in one stretch of land for so long against weaker victims that she felt stronger than she was.

Me? I had left chunks of my hide across near the whole world. And none of my enemies had ever been accused of being puny. But I had survived.

More or less.

Before she had moved, I had sensed her intent and ripped off my right glove. I shifted my shoulders, slipped past her thrust -- both of them.

One from the woman in front of me and the stinger from the spinning wheel creature.

That last had whizzed only a thin layer of skin from my left ear, so I’d no room to brag. In spite of everything, she had nearly killed me.

The woman of mist might not have been the hunger proper. But it was connected to her. And that was all that my right hand needed.

I wrapped what passed for my fingers around the woman’s icy throat. I bent down with her as she screamed writhing to the grass.

“What -- are -- you?”

“Pissed mostly. But sad too. You just couldn’t let it be, could you?”

She tore at me then. Both creature and woman.

But the more she slashed, the more I drained from her spirit. No lasting harm was done me, though the same couldn’t be said for the hunger.

“Now when I became bloodbrothers with Elu, I knew he was half Apache. It plain never occurred to me to ask what his mother was.”

The woman and creature were both flailing at me even more wildly. “What -- was -- she?”

“Still don’t rightly know for sure. Some say she is the World her own self. I have me some guesses of course. And while my guesses might be dead on or they might be full of worms, Mrs. McCord didn’t raise any son idiot enough to speak them to an enemy.”

Now while her slashings weren’t doing me any permanent damage, they sure hurt something fierce, so I commenced to drain her the faster.

“Let’s just say her blood played hell with mine, and mine with poor Elu. Truth to tell, I’d be hard put to say who got the worst end of that deal. But for me .... well, let’s just say, while you think you’re bad -- me, I - am - bad.”

I’ll give her this, she was dying and hurting and weakening, but she flat refused to ask for mercy. Pride.

You have to admire it sometimes, even when it is certain death, maybe especially those times.

“Kill her, Capt. Sam!,” screamed Sammy. “Kill her!”

That pulled me up short again. Did I want to do that? Did I? Did it always have to end in death? And in front of a young boy?

The woman of mists blurred, letting me see only a glimpse of the terrible beauty of the creature behind her.

“Do it. Kill me. It is fitting. You are the first of a breed as am I the last of one. Kill me and rid me of this farce I have been living for much too long.”

I shook my head, easing up on my draining but not on my hold of her. “There’s always mercy.”

“Mercy would be ending me.”

“I don’t see it that way. You may not be the last.”

“I would feel were it otherwise.”

“You might be wrong.”

“I am not. Kill me.”

Sammy cried, “Are you crazy? That’s a monster there.”

I called out loud. “We all do monstrous things, son. We can be better.”

The hunger sneered, “You delude yourself.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“Let me live, and I will kill again.”

“There are a lot of human vermin out there.”

“I let them live so as to weaken the herd.”

It hit me then. “You cull out the best of us, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You hate us that much?”

“Yes.”

I called out loud,

“You hear that, Sammy? She thinks you’re one of the best of us. You want her to win? Just let hate take control, and the murderer of your father wins. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want?”

“N-No.”

“Then fight her -- and your own hate, else she will win. You hear me?”

“Y-Yes, Capt. Sam.”

She glared up at me, and I flinched at the clearer glimpse of her true self I saw, and her voice was as plates of slate rubbing together.

“In your place I would show no mercy.”

“I know.”

I snapped open my fingers. She lay still for a moment, then blurred totally away.

The spinning wheel creature groaned, shivered, then gathered its last strength. I watched it scuttle painfully away into the blackness.

Almost lost in the shadows, the hunger paused and turned its bulk my way slightly. “Then why?”

“There has to be a difference between me and those I fight, or what’s the point?”

“What is the point?”

“Damned if I know.”

I glanced back at Sammy and wished I hadn’t.

For a lightning's flicker, it seemed something burned hollow and bright in his eagle eyes. A something I had seen earlier in the night. A cruel radiance.

I looked again. It was gone. Or was it? I peered close into his eyes.

A thick shadow suddenly swallowed Sammy's face. Its color was the odd black of blood billowing underneath the water. The dark waters of a wounded soul.

Only time would tell if it had been there at all or had only been the illuson cast by my own guilt.

And if it had been there, could I kill the boy whose soul I had tried to save? Could I? Or did a monster like me even have that right?

I lived with my curse. Maybe I could teach the boy to live with his. Maybe.

If.

If the mother would let me. If Sammy would let me. If I could.

Daniel's sad bear eyes went from Sammy to me then back again to the boy. He looked like he wanted to cry or to cuss or both. Me, too.

{END?}

***

SOME CALL ME TURQUOISE WOMAN_THEY'RE PEOPLE, TOO BLOGFEST

For Tessa's THEY'RE PEOPLE TOO BLOGFEST

http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/2010/08/theyre-people-too-blogfest.html

Some call me Turquoise Woman.

Others call me Gaia.

I call you temporary ... a fleeting rash upon my surface. Irritating, viral, and in the end, self-destructive.

Your race is like a tick that will gorge itself until it bursts. Bemused, I watch you scurry along my skin, moaning you are bringing an end to me.

I would laugh if it were not so pathetic. You are merely bringing an end to yourselves. I count the moments. You make my scalp itch.

You think you know what life is. Sad. Do you know what life is for you?

A firefly's flicker in the night, the breath of a buffalo in winter, a cloud shadow that races across the green grass to lose itself in the blood-red of the sunset.

Do not try to understand me. I look, not only down upon you, but out across the vast glittering sea of eternal night.

The color of my thoughts are the Northern Lights and the reach of them is from horizon to horizon and unto the vastness of the stars.

The electro-magnetic field of my body gave birth to my consciousness long before there were human hands to chisel stone into mute, blind idols or to brush your world in paint on cave walls.

Your only true contribution to me was your language.

Before you crafted words into being, my consciousness was unfocused. I listened with wonder as you spoke to one another, slowly piecing the concept of language together in my thoughts. Through the prism of your languages, my awareness crystalized.

I became aware.

Now, I know a haunted melancholy.

Like a windmill's blades, my thoughts dip into my memories. In misty after-images, I see your fleeting lives walking soft like prayers across my green fields only to fade into the inflamed oblivion of the sunset.

My son, Elu, will survive. Hibbs, the bear with two shadows, I have spirited safely away into a sister dimension.

But Samuel, my sad-eyed, adopted son, will soon die I think. Not at the hands of his life-long enemy, DayStar. But by the two-edged sword of his love for his wife, Meilori.

And that trickster scamp, Victor Standish, he, too, will die. I will miss him, for he, also, will be "consumed" by his love for the unnatural creature called Alice.

You are wondering why I am talking to you?

You are close to my heart as well, for all of you craft with words. So I have come to say seven words to you :

"Goodbye. Die well.

I will miss you."
***

GYPSY'S TALE : YOU CALL THIS SAFE?

{"Now, that's entertainment!"
- Vlad the Impaler.}

That blonde alley cat hadn't fooled me. She hadn't dumped me here in Mirror World for my safety. She wanted Food Guy all to herself. I was going to find him ... and her. Then, I'd set that two-legged cat straight.

But first I had a situation to take care of.

Slit eyes the size of windows glared at me. I glared back. After all, I was Gypsy, warrior princess, granddaughter of Bast herself. So what if the Sphinx of Thebes outweighed me by a ton or two? I had her on agility. And good looks.

If she didn't let go of that human ... what was his name? Oh, yes, Elu. If that Sphinx didn't let go of Elu, I was going to get all Sith on her ample rump.

He glared at me, too. What was his problem?

"It's all your fault, you furry rat," he snapped at me.

"What? My fault? So I unflipped the carrier latch. Big furry deal. I haven't been to the outskirts of Hell in ages. So I took my chance. It's not my fault you let Fang-Face sneak up on you?"

I wrinkled my muzzle. "Some fearsome Apache you are. Just how do let two tons of Ugly sneak up on you anyway?"

The Sphinx narrowed her eyes and rumbled, "Did you just call me Ugly?"

"Yeah, Mammary Girl, I did."

I was making fun of her so she didn't catch on to the fact that she scared the ever-loving piss out of me. I looked up at the towering bulk of her. I smiled wide, freezing it into place from sheer terror.


She was a sphinx. An honest to Egypt sphinx. The simple sentence doesn't do her justice.


The leathery rustle of her wings. The hellsky striking fire from her fangs. Me sceaming like a little kitten at the sight of her. That would do her justice. Not that I screamed mind you.


I have my reputation to think of.


I tried to think of a worse fix I had been in and couldn't. A living, breathing, fang-bearing, claw-extending sphinx was towering over me.



Her huge body, though the size of an elephant, looked like a lion's. Except for the giant eagle wings. She held a struggling Elu in one clenched paw. She sneered down at him with the head of a woman the size of a small boulder. But her teeth weren't those of a woman's.



They were like a lion's, long and sharp as the comfort of politicians. I watched gloomily as the muscles rippled under her golden fur like knotted ropes under a living canvas. Her claws oozed out longer and dug into the black sands as if in anticipation of ripping away my flesh.



"You dare call me Mammary Girl?," the Sphinx husked.



I forced a yawn. "You see any other mammaries dragging the sand?"



"My breasts are not! They are round and firm!"



"What century are we talking about, toots?"



With a roar of rage, she lunged at me. She was as agile as a boulder and about as bright. I raced forward and ducked under her stomach. There. Right under her belly button.



I wasn't thinking damage. I was thinking tickle. Which I did. She curled up laughing in an uncontrollable fit of giggles.



Ever hear a ten ton Sphinx giggle? Nightmare time believe me. Elu was still clutched in her now tightening fist. Well, so much for that plan. His dried apricot face was turning all kinds of neat shades of blue.



"What was your stragedy in that?," he gasped.



I faked surprise. "Stragedy - smatagedy. I'm just having fun."



"I'll show you fun, gnat," roared the Sphinx, spinning around to lunge at me.



Two could play that game. Angelina Jolie was doddering compared to my moves. I scrambled up the sloping face of the boulder to my right, sparks flying from my claws. I leapt onto the broad back of the screaming Sphinx.



"Ride 'em, CowCat," I yowled.



She bucked me off before I could take another breath. I flipped in the air and landed all Jedi-like on the sands in front of her.



"That was fun! Want to do it again?"



Her slit eyes narrowed. "Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?"



"The granddaughter of Bast actually, Sag-Breasts."



The Sphinx roared to the hellsky of the mirror world, then husked, "I laugh at Ba---"



Lightning sliced the insane sky and rasping thunder actually shook the sands beneath my paws. "Ah, Sand-Ho, I'd cool it on any badmouthing ancient Egyptian forces of nature, were I you."



The Sphinx looked uneasily at the darkening skies, then turned back to me. "If you would have this human unharmed, you must first answer my riddle."


"Hey, not so fast there, Two Ton. You have to earn the right to ask the granddaughter of Bast a riddle by answering one yourself."


Thunder rolled like an angry chorus of bulls above us, and the Sphinx sighed, "And if I fail to answer your riddle?"


I shrugged lazily. "Then, you hand me the human unharmed and leap off the cliff."


The Sphinx roared so that my ears rang, and I made a face. "Too much, huh?"


"All right, then you just leap off the cliff."


"What?," shouted both Elu and the Sphinx.


"Just joking," I snickered.


The Sphinx growled, "Fool of a cat, there isn't even a cliff."


I nodded to the new fixture of landscape. "There wasn't until you cracked smart about Grandmother. She takes things like that personal." (Which is what I'd been hoping.)


I nodded to Elu. "You can't answer, you just give me the human unharmed. Deal?"


She looked like she wanted to eat the lips off my beautiful, furry face but instead grumbled, "Agreed. Ask your riddle. And be fast with it. The aroma of your flesh hungers my belly."


And it must have. I heard her stomach rumble.


To stall for time to think of a decent, hell, even an indecent riddle, I clapped my two front paws together, "Oh, goody. A command performance."


"Riddle or die!"


I blew out my cheeks, thought, and thought some more. The Sphinx began to growl and a riddle Grandmother used to ask me at breakfast time came to me, and I purred :

"In marble walls as white as milk,

Lined with a skin of softest silk,

Within a fountain crystal clear,

A golden apple does appear,

No doors are there to this stronghold,

But Man breaks in to steal the gold."


I flashed the Sphinx a smile. "What is it?


"What is what?," she shrilled like a granite wall shearing in two.


"What am I describing in my riddle?"


"You spoke nonsense words!"


"This coming from a riddle-asking fool? Shame on you."


"There is no answer. Your flesh and this human's are mine!"


"An egg, flesh-breath. An egg. Yeah, not so easy on the receiving end of a riddle is it?"


"You cheated! And so you --"


She started to lunge when sand-stinging winds swirled all around her and thunder rumbled loud and long. The Sphinx screamed, her claws cutting ruts in the stone beneath her. But the winds still bore her along like a scrap of paper. She struggled for all the good it did her. She was forced along by the fury of the winds.


Right over the cliff.


"Elu!"


I heard a chuckle from where the Sphinx had dropped him in her efforts to stop herself being pushed over the cliff's edge.


"So you were worried about me, cat."


"Yeah, well don't let it get out. I have my reputation to uphold."


I padded to the cliff's edge and looked over. Ugggh. I made a face.


"No more lasagna for me."


I looked over to Elu. "Speaking of which ... I wonder how Food Guy is doing?"

********************

BLOGFEST OF DEATH entry / DEATH NEVER APOLOGIZES

I am shortly going into madness.

53 hours of nearly straight work with perhaps 3 hours a night sleep. 24 hour blood drives to replenish our dangerously depleted supply are necessary ...

and near murderous (for me.) So I am posting early for a promised appearance in my friend's, Tessa's, blogfest.

It is finally time for Tessa's BLOGFEST OF DEATH http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-death-scene-blogfest.html

This comes from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Some have noticed that Samuel doesn't kill often. There is a reason. And now, you'll see it for yourself.

{Sam is in the mirror world with his mysterious Apache blood-brother, Elu. His brother has just berated Sam for not ... feeding.

He is now showing Sam how the mayor of New Orleans is in danger from his aides who are actually members of the Russian mob} :

Elu shook his head.

"When is the last time you fed your hunger, Dyami?"

"It's ... been awhile. I haven't met anyone bad enough to leech from."

His right eyebrow shot up. "The rapists and murderers in the Convention Center were not dark-souled enough for you?"

"They were children. Rabid children. But children."

Elu scowled. "You must explain your maze of rules to me one day."

"As soon as I've figured them out myself, you'll be the first to know."

Elu gestured gracefully again, and a scene of mist wavered to life before the two of us. "I think I have found three souls dark and aged enough even for you, Dyami. But beware. Cossacks taste bad."

The filmy window to my world showed a scene of one of the best suites in the Hyatt hotel in New Orleans that I owned.

It was on the 27th floor as I recalled. Nagin would gag if he knew it was me that offered it to him when he had made it plain he planned to stay out the hurricane. I owned a good bit of my city through dummy corporations.

Nagin was pacing about like a caged tiger, his eyes shining from lack of sleep and fatique. I knew the feeling. He was surrounded by aides.

Most were soft-bellied bottom-feeders. But I spotted the three members of the Russian Mob, though their clothes were similar to the toadies.

The Russian Mob or Bratva, Russian slang for "brotherhood."

It was a brutal organization.

Since 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union, it had gained considerable power and influence.

I might have been more impressed if I hadn't known they were unknowing catspawns for the European Revenant Empire. The ERE as I called it. I refused to call it what its empress Theodora called it, even in my head.

Revenants. Vampires.

Neither name really did justice to the horror they were. I had crossed trails with them off and on since 1853, when aboard the Demeter, I had scared pure hell out of them by revealing I could kill them through acupuncture.

But back to the Russian Mob.

It was easier for Theodora to control since it was made up of diverse criminal syndicates, not one global entity. She could play one off the other, keep them off-balanced and easier to manipulate. I had thought she and I had an agreement.

America was off-limits. The rest of the world was her playground. Maybe I didn't understand how she thought.

Now, KGB agents, them I understood.

One of the three Russian mobsters playing undercover aides to Nagin I recognized as KGB. I didn't know his real name. He probably had forgetten it as well since he had used so many false ones in the past.

And that he would join something called Vory v zakone or "thieves in law" was almost funny. Almost. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, KGB agents had found themselves unemployed and had taken their skills to where they were welcomed.

I wonder where his tattoos were hidden?

Probably had gold stars on his knees, symbolizing he would kneel to no man. The Russian Mob was a lot like the rest of the world when it came to symbols. To them, the tattoo was a precious symbol, so prized that ultimately it became the reality.

No room for miracles and the divine gift of compassion. I didn't begrudge economic and educational progress. But was it really progress? And at what price and in what coin? More questions. And not an answer in sight.

The other two mobsters weren't hard to spot.

The Gulag changes you, the way you hold yourself, compact and ready, and the deadness in the eyes, mute testimony to the murder of the soul within. They were probably posing as security. An oxymoron if there ever was one.

If Elu wanted me here, they were working for Nagin to be in the perfect position to kill him. And now, during the chaos of Katrina was the perfect time.

Nagin was pacing, listening to the voice he most loved to hear : his own.

"The people of our city are holding on by a thread. Time has run out. Can we survive another night? God knows. And who can we depend on?"

The KGB agent clamped a hand on Nagin's broad shoulder. "You can depend on me."

"I know I can, Peter."

Nagin shook his bald head. "But who else? We are going to lose a sizable portion of our population."

I made a face. Lose? He meant the dead. Was he worried about the votes or the lives? I was hoping he was concerned about the lives.

A toady on the edge of his chair seat urged in a tinny voice, "Mr. Mayor, we need a decision."

Nagin scowled, "You guys are pushing me in an area that I don't want to go. I don't want to lose another person."

He bit his lower lip. "This is a sad day in the city of New Orleans when you want a hero to make a decision such as this."

Now, I was the one doing the frowning. What was he talking about? I stopped worrying about trifles. Peter was slipping his right hand under his jacket. Crap. It was happening now.

He preached to the captive congregation. "I mean doesn't it strike you that God is mad at America? He's sending hurricane after hurricane at us."

He was worked up now, ignoring the fact that the three Russian mobsters were white. "It's time for us blacks to come together, to stop killing one another. I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. By the end of the day, New Orleans will be a chocolate city the way God wants it to be."

Peter stood up slowly. Nagin looked at him, his face frowning like a prune. Peter slipped his hand completely under his jacket. Crap. He was going to kill him now.

Peter dropped his cultured pose, speaking his words heavily tinged in an Russian accent. "I have always preferred bitter chocolate myself."

The automatic with the long silencer was held steady, aimed right between Nagin's startled eyes, and Elu wryly smiled, "Time to save the 'hero,' Dyami."

He shoved me hard into the misty scene, while ripping my right glove off. "And feed that hunger of yours."

Damn Elu. Not in front of the mayor. I appeared seemingly out of nowhere to those in the suite right beside a slack-jawed Peter. I wrapped what passed for the fingers of my right hand around the Russian's throat.

"I dunno, Peter. I've always been partial to white chocolate. How about you, Nagin?"

He stepped away from me, his trembling fingers to his open mouth. "Oh, God. Oh, God."

My right palm felt like I had plunged it into acid, and I arched in agony.

Flashes of the memories of Kirill {his real name, ironically meaning "lord"} stabbed into my repulsed mind.

Not just memories, but the smells, sounds, and sensations of those images sizzled into me.

Gutting his first victim with a linoleum knife. Kissing the young girl that would later become his wife. Strangling her twenty years later. Bouncing his little boy on his knee. Pouring acid into another boy's face of the same age in front of the screaming father. Getting drunk the night Russia fell.

A thousand thousand unwanted sensations and images seared into me. I staggered.

His two fellow Russians drew their weapons.

To my heightened senses it seemed that they moved under water, slow and strangely graceful. My world on fire, I took Kirill's automatic from his withering fingers. I shot the two of them through both eyes.

That way they would endlessly wander through the Spirit World, blindly seeking the peace that would be denied them. Or at least that was what Elu used to believe. Like me, he had come to doubt much of the lore attached to the Great Mystery.

The soft-belied aide closest to me wet his pants. "Sweet Jesus. Sweet Jesus. Mother Mary help me."

I looked down at him. "Seeing as how you sold yourself to the world a long time ago, pilgrim, I think you're a mite late."

As I dropped the completely withered corpse of Kirill, Nagin looked at me, his face gone pasty. "What the hell are you, McCord?"

I forced down my self-revulsion and smiled like a wolf. "Full."

****************
And there you have it. Samuel McCord has become what the Apache call a Gahe ... drainer of the souls of men ... and hater of his own. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Sam's personal nightmare.
****************

PRIMAL SCREAM! BLOGFEST

Because of my late shift as blood courier, I am posting my entry for the PRIMAL SCREAM! blogfest a bit early :

Today is Raquel Brynes' PRIMAL SCREAM! blogfest http://nitewriter6.blogspot.com/

My entry goes back to the moment that shaped my epic undead hero, Samuel McCord, into the driven person he has become. We go back in time to when he was but 15 years old in the deadly plains of west Texas in 1815. Elu, the mystic Apache shaman, has been hunting with him in the form of an enormous golden eagle -- something that Sam is just young enough to accept with youth's ability to grasp the impossible.

It is from my short story, "My Father's Gun" :

The eagle spoke to me. I wish I could say I was dreaming. I wasn’t. I wish I could say it was for the first time. It wasn’t. I wish I could say I was crazy. I ... hell, that was a maybe.

He was staring at me with those piercing eyes of his, the desert sun making his feathers seem burning gold. Because of him I never came home without having bagged game of some sort. His sky-eye spotted even the most well-hidden deer or rabbit. Father was thinking me something of a wonder. He had taken to giving me only two bullets out of our scarce supply.

One for the game. One for me should the Comanches corner me. Finally I had his respect. I took no pride in it. It hadn’t been earned.

Perched on the Joshua tree, the eagle fluffed out his huge wings. And he spoke. Not in actual words, mind you. I heard them in my mind. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Me being crazy wasn’t a maybe.

"Dyami, (he had taken to calling me Eagle in Apache, after all if I was going to take credit for an eagle’s kill, shouldn’t I go by that name?)

"What, Elu?" (That was what he said his name was; Apache for full of grace - most times he was full of something else, which explained why his eyes were so brown.)

"I have done something terrible"

"We all do sooner of later."

He soared from the tree and landed on my left shoulder, sinking his talons deep into my flesh. I fought to keep from crying out in pain. Elu didn’t take signs of weakness well. He was a lot like my father in that.

"To you, thick of skull. To you."

"You meant to?"

"Of course not! We are fr -- hunting companions."

"Then you’re forgiven."

He sank his talons in deeper. "You do not even know what it is that I have done."

I shrugged. A real feat with Elu digging his claws into my shoulder. "Don’t need to. I have your word that you didn’t mean to. Friends forgive friends. Hell, Elu, if my friends have to live with my mistakes, why should I get all bent out of shape about living with theirs?"

This time I did cry out as his talons dug deep. "Do not be so quick with your forgiveness. It has cost you deeply."

"I’m still alive."

"No. You are a dead man walking."

I looked deep into those piercing eyes. Damn, he meant it. I grew all cold inside. The Comanches. Oh, God, the Comanches. Somehow Elu had gotten them on my trail. I hefted my father’s Hawkins rifle, its weight reassuring in my hands. The small white-tailed deer over my right shoulder had been bagged with just one shot. I still had the other bullet. I let out a long, slow sigh, feeling as if my life was leaving me with it.

Hell, Elu hadn’t meant to kill me. I looked up into the harsh blue sky for a long moment. Maybe in the afterlife my spirit would soar next to his.

He looked deeper into my eyes. His next words proved what I had always suspected. He could read my mind.

"Your thoughts are older than your fifteen years. And I am shamed."

I felt a flicker of resentment. "I’m not my father, Elu. You don’t have to feel shame just ‘cause you made a mistake."

"Your father is hard on you."

"A bit. I’d have hated to have been one of his pupils in Harvard."

"Is this Harvard far from my mountains?"

"I'd say Texas is about as far as you can get from it and still be on dry land."

"Then why did he come?"

"He had consump -- ah, had a sickness in his lungs. He hoped the desert heat would help."

Elu’s glittering eyes bored deep into mine. "He is hard on you to make you hard. Hard enough to survive my mountains long enough to be all that you can be."

I sighed, "Yeah that’s what mother says. But Rachel, my sister, says that some men are born to be poets not soldiers."

He bobbed his head as if in an agreeing nod. "You could become a Far-Seeing One."

His eyes seemed to look inward and not like what they saw. "You love your mother and sister, do you not?"

"With all my heart."

"And your father?"

"I -- respect him, fear him. I -- I don’t know about love."

"You love him. Just not in the same way as your mother and sister. And -- and ...."

My throat got tight. "And what?"

He ducked his head. "And I have brought those you call Comanches to their nest."

"What? I’ve got to get there!"

"No! Wait. It is too late. If you go now, you will only see terrible things."

I tossed the deer from my right shoulder and started off in a mile-eating lope. "Then I’ll see terrible things!"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elu land on the deer I dropped. My heart sank. He wasn’t coming with me. He was mad at me. I ground my teeth. Let him. Rachel, Mother, and Father were in danger. I had to get to them in time. I just had to.

I ran measured and steady, the water in my nearly full canteen sloshing with each bootfall. The distance was eaten up in easy strides. My daily hunts had built strength in my legs. I was all gristle and muscle.

Elu had taught me how to leave not a trace behind as I walked, though I still left too much sign when I ran. As I was running now. Let the Comanches follow me, just so long as I got to my family in time.

I ran for hours it seemed. Time lost its meaning. But not fear. Fear was all too real as it coiled tight and cold inside my chest. I looked up at the rise ahead of me. Just beyond it lay my home. I slowed. No sense in me getting killed by a Comanche brave before I got to --

Two gunshots. A scream hoarse and shrill. I smiled grim. Father knew all the nerve clusters in the human body. A bullet placed in them, he had told me, would make even the fiercest Comanche scream. And something like that would make the other braves think twice about showing themselves.

I got on my belly and carefully edged up the rise. I swiped off my hat, hoping my shock of brown hair wouldn’t attract notice. Slow and sure I made it up the rise. I sneaked a look over the rock and gravel.

No. Damn it, no. It was bad. Real bad.

Rachel, Mother, and Father. All three of them were trapped out by the well. Damn that Rachel. She must have been daydreaming about those fancy balls Mother had told her about from her time in London.

Rachel never minded her surroundings. Never. She had been caught flatfooted out by the well. Lucky for her that Father knew that Comanches and Apaches liked to catch whites out by their wells. He had built a three wall affair around ours, with slits in the stone for rifle barrels to stick out of.

I gnawed my lip. I had his best rifle. He still had Death and Taxes, the single-shot pistols the Hawkins brothers had made for him. And he had the five shot pistol Mother had bought him in London.

Somehow Mother and Father had made it out to the well. Mother was all right. Father’s right shoulder had a bloody bandage around it.

I watched with sinking heart as a Comanche brave purposedly showed himself then ducked back down behind a boulder. Father had just glared at the brave and hadn’t even tried to take the easy shot.

I tried to swallow and couldn’t. That meant only one thing. They were down to just three bullets. One for each of them.

What was I going to do now? I had only one bullet myself. I had to make that one count for the most. But just what could I do with only one bullet?

My heart became a rock as I saw Mother motion to Rachel. Her face was pale. Her lips were quivering. But still Rachel moved with the grace of a born dancer as she crabbed on her knees to her.

Mother softly stroked my sister’s long blonde hair and hugged her fierce. Before I could take another breath, I heard the shot. Rachel stiffened, then slumped like a sack of flour to the dust.

No. No! Not Rachel. Not her.

We had been so fully one that I hadn’t thought we could die apart. We would always be together. Always. I couldn’t seem to move. Mother looked over to Father.

Though I shouldn’t have been able to, I still heard her. "Oh, John, what have I done? What in God’s name have I done?"

"What you had to, Ruth."

He reached out for her. They clung to each other as if trying to melt into one another. He kissed her like I had never seen him do before. He pulled his head back.

"I love you so, Ruth, I ache with it."

She stroked his drawn cheek. "Who could blame yo--"

The shot rang out like a thunderclap. I jerked as if the bullet had burned into me. And worse yet, Father bellowed as if his chest couldn’t hold all the grief and pain. He stood up.

"Come and get me, you bastards!"

The Comanches yelled their rage at his robbing them of their rape and torture. He smiled and aimed his pistol carefully at the closest of the charinging braves.

No. Don’t do it, Father. That bullet’s for you. Don’t!

He fired. And the brave clutched his chest and reeled silent to the ground. The rest screamed, half in anger, half in anticipation of long, bloody hours of torture on this hated white man.

I sprang to my feet. "Father!"

He looked up, his eyes locking onto mine and yelled, "Sam? Oh, god, you saw. You saw! I - I love you, Sam. Now, run. Run!"

Like Hell.

I swung up his rifle. I sucked in a breath and let it out slow. I heard him in my mind from years back :

"Betsy is a sensitive beauty, Sam. You have to treat her gentle. Caress her trigger, pull it back as if you were brushing back a lock of Rachel’s hair. Nice and easy. She wants you to hit the target, Sam. She really does. Treat her right, and she’ll hit it for you every time."

I saw the Comanche to my left aim his bow straight at me. Let him. I had all the time in the world. All the time in Father's world. Father’s jaw firmed. He nodded.

"I love you, Sa--"

I caressed Betsy’s trigger. She slammed hard into my right shoulder. Father’s head seemed to explode like a melon hit by a hammer. The Comanche let his arrow fly.

A blur of golden feathers streaked down from the sky. Elu. Impossibly he caught the arrow, snapping it in two. He swept across to the brave, ripping out the Indian’s throat in a red spurt of gushing blood.

"Run, Dyami. Run! I will slow them down."

I hesitated. "Would you have their deaths be for nothing? Run!"

I ran.

They wanted me? Well, they damn sure would have to work for their bloody fun. I took off towards the mountains to my right. The mountains that the Comanches feared.

The mountains that Elu said belonged to his mother, Estanatlehi, The Turquoise Woman. She whose shadow it was death to step upon.
*******************************
The title to my short story comes from the song "My Father's Gun" by Elton John. And here it is :