A BLUE MOON TO DIE FOR_Friday's Romantic Challenge

I'm prior-posting this 5 days in advance :

feverish, coughing, and chest pains. The ghost of Mark Twain keeps telling me that dying's not so bad.

"As compared to what?," I ask.

He takes a slow puff of his cigar and snorts, "Being nibbled to death by critics."

That's Samuel for you!
***
Denise and Francine have given us the prompt of BLUE MOON.

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

So many things happen only once in a blue moon :

friendships with kindred spirits as I have found here in blogdom.

pursuing your dream with gusto.

and true love.
***
My entry is from THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH :

Victor has taken his newly found love to the infamous drug kingpin, the Snowman and his hitwoman Ice. The terms "Snow Cone" and "Ice cream" take on new meaning for Victor.

Alice and Victor hear Samuel McCord, Father Renfield, and Ada Byron rush to rescue Victor.


Alice whispered, "Victor, the McCord will kill me when he sees what I have done."

I patted her hand. "Not with me here. He and I are friends."

"The McCord has no friends when it comes to justice, Victor. You will see."

I heard Father Renfield scuffling with my friend outside the door.
"No, Sam, let me go in first. Let me see ...."

"No," snapped Captain Sam.

"Yes," said Ada, and I saw her zip in through the open doorway.

She pulled up short as she saw what remained of the Snowman and Ice. She looked at Alice. And I remembered the blood on her lips and fingers.

Ada gasped, "Oh, my stars!"

Renfield darted past her, looking at the bodies, then at Alice behind me. "Bloody Hell!"

Captain Sam rasped, "Dear God, what did that fiend do to Victor?"

And suddenly he was in front of my two friends. He seemed untouched by the Snowman's guards, his smoking Colts still held in his hands.

He looked at me, then at the bloody remains of the Snowman and Ice.

Soft and low, he spoke to me, "Victor, move away from the ghoul. Now."

I shook my head. "Her name's Alice, sir."

His words were soft thunder. "Move away from Alice, son."

"She's my ghoul friend, sir."

Alice kicked me in the right shin. "Damn, Alice! That was the one place on my whole body that didn't hurt!"

I saw Sam angle for a killing shot. "You know, Alice, blocking you from harm is hard enough without having to do it hopping about on one foot."

Ada cocked her head as she studied the two of us. She slowly smiled.

Alice hissed, "Do not EVER call me that again, Victor!"

Sam raised both Colts, and I rasped, "You'll have to shoot through me, sir!"

His pale face was hard. "I'll do what I have to, son. Please don't make me shoot through you."

"No!," screamed Alice. "Do not kill Victor. Kill me if you must, but leave my Victor alone!"

Everybody's eyebrows rose up at her word "my." Ada patted down Sam's Colts.

"Oh, do put away those behemoths, Samuel."

"What are you talking about? Look at what she'd done."

Ada shook her head. "No, look at what Victor has done."

"Have you gone loco?"

"Have you gone brain-dead, Samuel? Miss Wentworth has never strayed more than a block from her cemetery in all these years. No, Victor led her here to avenge Susan and punish vermin who needed it.

She looked tenderly at Alice. "Samuel will not hurt you dear."

"I won't? She's a ghoul, Ada."

"No, Samuel. She's Meilori."

He stiffened. "What did you say?"

"Oh, Samuel, real love comes but once in a blue moon. Think 1853. Look at them. Look at the way she looks at him. The way he was about to die for her."

Ada smiled as if it were an open wound. "She's Meilori, and he's you as you both were aboard the DEMETER in 1853."

He slowly turned to study us. He closed his eyes as if what he saw hurt him too deeply to keep on looking. He holstered his Colts.

Alice smiled at Ada. "You should have seen him do his Parkour."

Sam raised an eyebrow at me. "You know that?"

I nodded. "Learned it in Cleveland from a sensei."

Renfield barked a laugh. "He learns a French skill from a Japanese Master in Cleveland. Victor, you're a bloody riot."

Alice hugged my right arm. "He's a hero. My hero."

Sam sighed and doffed his Stetson to Alice. "Miss Wentworth, would you do me the honor of coming to Meilori's?"

Alice hushed, "Meilori's? Oh, could I? I have always wanted to go."

I patted her hand. "The first time's the worst. But don't worry. I'll be by your side."

Alice smiled soft. "Those are the only words I will ever have to hear to feel safe."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ada's lips move silently. But I read the words : "... and loved."
***

HEART STOPPER

Love.

What is its color? How much space does it take up in our heart?

Doesn't your heart feel near to bursting when you first spot the one you love?

And when it dies, the Grand Canyon seems small compared to the hollowness in that same heart.

Francine and Denise have given us the prompt, HEART-STOPPER, to use this Friday :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My entry is from ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM.

Many have emailed me asking what could possibly destroy such a one as Samuel McCord as Maija threatened last week.

Before she fell in love with Samuel, Meilori had made a pretense of assisting DayStar for her own purposes. But she learns even the pretense carries a steep price.

DayStar has taken possession of her body after the BALL OF DEATH & MADNESS, and he sends her against her beloved.

Samuel is seemingly without a single weapon. We join the festivities at that point :

DayStar studied me like a steak he was about to eat.

“You are weaponless.”

I pulled King Solomon’s knife from its neck sheath. “Not completely.”

He smiled. “Ah, so you want the dying to be up-close and personal, do you?”

His eyes grew dreamy. “Let us slow the pace to this last dance, shall we?”

Meilori spoke low. “You must kill me, beloved, for if you should die by my hand, I would kill myself anyway.”

I locked my eyes on hers.

“This is not going to work out like he plans --- beloved.”

DayStar murmured, “You simply have no idea.”

“Keep telling you. I usually don’t.”

He smiled, and Meilori spun elegantly, holding her bone sword up high with both hands.

And it began.

Eyes.

I felt them on me.

Meilori’s : weeping with an aching love, a hollowing sadness, and utter terror.

Fallen’s : bruised, fearful, yet whispering an unreasoning hope.

Renfield’s : dark, filled with remorse and regret.

Maija’s : blue pools of icy regard in whose depths swam uncertainty and longing.

Meilori wheeled gracefully around me as if to some melody of death only she could hear. Me?

It seemed as if I could hear the trumpets of a bull fight as it reached its bloody climax. I was under no illusions who was the bull in this fight.

I was bone weary, moving with all the skill and stealth of a wounded moose. Meilori was as the wind given life, light, ethereal, and full of death.

And DayStar could move her with even more speed than I could muster.

My gloved hand clutched Solomon’s blade tighter, my fingers feeling numb and sweaty.

Meilori danced about me, meeting my each body shift easily, gracefully.

Her jade eyes seemed to swallow me. Her voice was a wet husk.

“I love you, my Samuel.”

“And I you.”

Fallen whimpered as the tears bled from her hollow eyes. Renfield turned his eyes away.

Maija looked first at me, then at her sister, her blue eyes slowly turning to DayStar with hate. DayStar began to smile wider.

The trumpets only I could hear started to crescendo. The dance was nearly done.

Meilori’s lips worked wordlessly as she fought the possession of her body. Black tears seeped from the corners of her eyes.

“We will meet again where the shadows never fall.”

DayStar laughed. Meilori's jaw firmed. My right hand suddenly became stone.

With uncomprehending eyes, I saw Solomon’s blade in it fly impossibly fast straight into Meilori’s heart. DayStar cursed.

Fallen sucked in a breath. Meilori fell into my arms that were once again mine.

No!

She had taken control of my body as DayStar had taken control of hers. No! This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. No!

She lay limp in my arms. Her eyes rolling up, she tried to speak but couldn’t.

Only a wet gurgle came out. But still I heard her voice murmur within my mind. One word.

One last word.

‘Beloved.’

I heard an animal wail. Wail as if its guts had been scooped out. Then it came to me. No animal was wailing in pain.

It was me.

Me.

And DayStar laughed.
***
Not part of my entry, but this poem by Stephen Crane begins the next chapter. I add it for Andy and my other friends who enjoy poetry.

“Places among the stars,

Soft gardens near the sun,

Shed no beams upon my weak heart,

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Not your golden days

Nor your silver nights

Can call me to you.

Since she is here

In a place of blackness,

Here I stay and wait.”

***

A MOMENT OF LOVE ... and DEATH

I am a romantic.

Not just on Fridays. Just because I am taken with this brief glimpse into the mythical, lyrical love of Blake, son of Man, and Fallen, last of the faes,

I share it with all of you, my friends :

{Blake and Fallen have just arrived in the lethal beauty of Avalon. Fallen is spent from her earlier ordeals. The two seek a place where they might rest with the shelter of a lush green slope behind them. Fallen lays slumbering as Blake sits protectively beside her.}

(When they speak in thee's and thou's, they are speaking in the tongue of Faerie - Blake was given the gift of Tongues in LOVE LIKE DEATH.)

The moon had risen just enough to send a shaft of its light through the umbrella of oak branches above us. A diffused glow of icy white lanced down to caress Fallen's face in a shimmering halo. And suddenly, she looked as angelic and pure as an angel. My heart seemed to grow and burn within me. I loved her so. Her eyelids flickered apart slightly, and she smiled dreamily up at me.

"Who needs a campfire," she murmured, "when thy love burns so bright beside me?"

Reaching out with her right hand, she softly touched mine, never taking her gleaming, mysterious eyes off me. “To find something, one must picture it first in one’s mind. No wonder I could never find love, for I had yet to see thee.”

I forced my lips to whisper, “I am an orphan, Fallen. A pauper. I have nothing worthy of thee to give.”

“Just love me, Blake. Simply love me, and I wilt be the richest Sidhe in all Avalon.”

“That’s a given, Fallen.”

She wrinkled her nose like a rabbit. “Oh, I knew that.”

Then, she laughed in her sleepy, impish way and shifted just enough to nestle her head in my lap. And just like that, she was asleep again. And I felt the richest orphan in all the world.

I don’t know how long I sat there with her head resting in my lap. I could have sat there for eternity and never regretted a second of it. After a time, I gingerly reached out and stroked her soft, velvet hair, careful not to mess up its intricate knots and weaves. Instead of waking up, Fallen just wiggled and started purring like a lost kitten having found home.

I stiffened just a bit. Home. I smiled. I had found home again. And it wasn’t Avalon. It was Fallen. I was home. And it felt wonderful.

I just sat there as the minutes flowed into hours and soaked up the peace and contentment I had thought would never be mine again.

As I sat there, trying to burn this scene, this moment, this feeling so deep into my heart and mind that I would never forget it, something white in the corner of my eye moved slightly. I went stiff, fear shooting across my chest. I turned my head slowly so as to not draw attention to the fact that I had spotted what was approaching. And then, I saw her.

The White Lady of Montaigu.

The slayer of all lovers who crossed her path.
***
And now to share with you the music of Josh Groban that I was hearing in my heart and mind as I wrote (the love theme to ROMEO & JULIET) :

***

BLACK ROSES IN AVALON!

The LOVE LIKE DEATH trilogy concludes :

Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But eclipses return. And currents exist that are eternal. One such current is Love.

It binds the universe together.

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear him?

Blake, son of Man, is calling out across the night skies. What is he saying?

Remember.

Remember the strangled dreams, the shattered illusions that dropped from your bruised fingers long ago as a child. Still Time can be transcended. If you but remember ...

that love is forever,

that love cannot be taken from you,

that wounded hearts and minds but cast it from them in despair.

Listen.

Listen as Blake tells of haunted Avalon, broken by bloody Civil War. Of his love for the moon and the sun : the Last Fae and the alien drinker of souls.

Listen to his memories of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON :

The orphan, Blake Adamson, has been running for his life … or has he been running from it? One part of his mind says he is delirious, dying in the burnt ruins of his orphanage. Most of his mind insists what he is seeing and enduring is all too real.

His heart wants to believe the world he sees is real. A heart that is torn between an alien drinker of souls and the Last Fae. Loving both the sun and the moon may be his death. But Blake Adamson cannot help himself.

In an attempt to escape the enraged demigod, Abaddon Sennacherib, Blake and Fallen, the Last Fae, have left Victorian London by bending time and space,

using an ancient enchanted blade as a rudder. The two fugitive lovers find themselves far in the past … to Avalon.

Avalon, where life is illusory and deceptive, as are its inhabitants. In Faerie, nothing is as it seems, and even the simple act of uttering a name can be fraught with danger and death.

Blake and Fallen have appeared close to the Crystal Castle at the bottom of Lake Sayrade. The Dancers of the Myst float on their icy blue crafts upon that lake. And their Queen is Danis Nokkes, punisher of all false lovers.

Blake insists he is not false … just over-committed.

The distinction is lost to the sadistic Queen. To the Sidhe, mortals are but toys and pawns in their power games. They love to make the epitaph small and the death large.

In escaping the sadistic Queen, Blake and Fallen clash with the feral Wyldaelfen. And blood and destiny ensues.

In the midst of enemies in Broceliande Forest, they fail to skirt the Shadows of the Erinnyes and their dark queen Dinselle of the Golden Skin.

Atop the King and Queen of Avalon’s unicorns, Blake and Fallen evade the Wild Hunt as they race across the flying boulders of the fabled River Sambayton high in the skies of Avalon.

Until in the crystal and gold palace of Caer Wydr, Blake and Fallen endure the dark ritual, Diathke, ending the Avalon Civil War by paying the fearsome cost for love eternal.
***
http://www.amazon.com/BLACK-ROSES-IN-AVALON-ebook/dp/B005GQN03C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313029711&sr=1-1
***

SEX EXPLAINED!

SEX explained

We want to believe. And it causes us no end of troubles.

Many have emailed me, asking what I was doing with my SEX post.

In the last four hours of the day yesterday, I posted the one word, SEX, and two sexy photos. Nothing else. I tripled my existing number of visitors and far surpassed the highest day of the past month.

John Locke claims to know the secret of vast eBooks sales. I’m happy for him. But you don’t catch J K Rowling or Stephanie Meyers writing books on how to sell millions of books.

Why? Sometimes the lightning strikes. Sometimes it doesn’t. It rarely strikes twice in exactly the same way.

John is sure the key is to write “timeless” posts, twitter search who has spoken of your topic, then twitter them the link to your “forever relevant” post. BAM. Success is waiting to pounce upon you after that.

He wrote a post of his hero worship of Joe Paterno and his mother and followed his recipe for success. Lightning struck. The university which employs Coach Paterno chose Locke’s post as the blog of the month. Thousands of visitors poured Locke’s way. Fate’s spotlight sizzled upon him.

Locke had a backlist of books ready for the opportunity. He himself describes his books as lewd, shocking, disgusting, and deliciously bawdy. As yesterday proves, SEX sells. Amanda Hocking found out the same thing.

Can we duplicate that chance fall of the dice? Can we write something that will speak to the heart of an institution or international movie star so much that they will write of it in their blog or twitters? Lots of luck with that.

So far Stephen King hasn't written of me in his ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY articles. And I promised him a date with Olivia Wilde, too!

We all want to believe that there is a system. The casinos love those of us who cling to that delusion.

There is only the strike of lightning. Our responsibility is to have the best product we can craft should that lightning ever strike us. We can hold up the lightning rod all day, or we can continue to grow as writers. The smartest of us try to do both.
***

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

Merry Christmas to all my friends!

Christmas' present to all of us

is the subtle messages underneath the obvious ones :

1.) Love comes unexpectedly.

2.) You find love in surprising places.

3.) Love comes at its own season, in its own unique way, wearing a face you weren't looking for.

But then, we can be forgiven for not hearing those messages. After all, none of us is perfect. Well, there was that one.

But we killed Him.

Or did we? I choose to think not. I know His message and the messages of this day are not dead.

Love never quite dies. It stays in the sparkle in the eyes of each passing generation of children.

The best Christmas stories, in both movies and books, remind us that love always seems to find a way,

though it comes to us in unexpected ways, shining in the eyes of those we might have overlooked in the past.

The Jews were expecting a king. They never got one because they were looking in the wrong places for the wrong faces.

A manger contained the prince of peace in its straw. Few were even aware of His arrival.

Only those who were not too proud to stop and consider love might come unexpectedly and from a source we would never have suspected of containing it. And only to those who had kept looking up.

Christmas teaches us to keep the child's sense of awe, of wonder, and of the willingness to believe ...

in the possibilities of miracles,

of the soft whisper of magic in the air if you but listen,

and in the healing power of love.

Like young Kevin in HOME ALONE, it is up to us alone to protect the home of our hearts from being robbed of their innocence and love.

Sometimes we do not see unicorns in the snow because we have stopped looking for them.

Continue to look. Continue to hold gently to the possibility of a miracle waiting for you just around the next corner or the one after that.

Excuse me. I think I hear a strange whinnying outside my door.

I'll open it to have a look. My unicorn may be out there below my terrace right now waiting for me to go for a ride in the moonlight.

You never know.

Keep looking and believing, Roland
***

WHAT IS LOVE?

Don't forget to vote for my entry in Tessa's OUTSIDE THE BOX blogfest :
http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

I told two of my friends at work of a scene from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

They asked if I would post it here so they could read it in its entirety.

They both said the way I spoke it was magical. With a compliment like that, how could I refuse them?


All of us fall in love. Some with danger. Many with lust. Less with romance.

A mad few with death itself. Samuel McCord does it with all of them -- and all with one woman.

Meilori Shinseen, empress of a people exiled from another plane of existence.

Samuel's love for his wife, Meilori Shinseen, is as undying and epic as a Greek tragedy.

It is known all throughout the Shadowlands. As it is also known that his great love for Meilori will be the end of him.

And if Sam could hold her just one more time in his arms, he would face that end with a smile.

And here is that ghostly encounter from my novel that my friends wanted to read.

{FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE is a speculative Noir thriller. An alternate history, if you would,

of what could have happened after Katrina but didn't --

in a plane of existence where the supernatural exists. And who is to say that it doesn't exist in this one?}

CHAPTER TEN

A REMEMBRANCE OF SHADOWS

The week that followed my visits to Bush and Nagin was a blur of too many demands and too few hands. But Renfield and I managed.

Swartzkoph, the new head of FEMA, came steamrolling in, busting heads and butts.

He left me alone, and I wisely kept a low profile, keeping to the shadows, trying to make his work easier not harder.

But considering the labors of Hercules he was attempting, he was finding the Big Easy anything but easy.

And I went about my work in the shadows.

But now, after a whole week, he had sent for me. He had picked an odd meeting place : the Tulane campus. It was a mess but relatively dry considering Katrina.

Renfield insisted on going with me. He was worried that I was pressing myself too hard and my senses were dulled by fatigue.

But in an odd way, it was the exact opposite. Weariness over-rode the unconscious filter I put on what Rind's blood mingled with mine showed me.

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 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.

How amused she had been at being flirted with on the front porches of Jelly Roll Morten, Buddy Bolden, and Papa Jack Laine earlier that day.

Those same houses had somehow survived Katrina, though not without damage. I made myself a promise I would see those places repaired.

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.

Outraged dowagers bent heads together, their silent tongues wagging at the sight of a priest and nun openly dancing under the watching stars.

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.

Renfield shook his head. "Remember the last dance of the night, Sam?"

I nodded. "Yes, I remember. Don't understand it. But I remember it."

"Why did Meilori shush you off like that to dance by herself -- as if someone invisible was dancing with her?"

I sighed. "Haven't a clue. But it was a sight. She was so graceful, so full of sad love."

Renfield frowned, then nodded. "Sad love? Bloody Hell, you're right. I could never pin down the expression on her face until now. But sad love says it all."

"All. And nothing. I still don't understand the why of it. Just that she was so hauntingly beautiful as she danced."

Renfield made a face. "She could have been washing clothes on a rock, and you would have found her beautiful."

"I may have many sorrows, Padre, but the memory of Meilori is not one of them."

Renfield was about to say something, then looked off to our left. I followed the path of his eyes. I smiled. Swartz. Not that I called him that to his face, mind you.

He was a career soldier, full of discipline and respect for tradition and position. He was striding purposedly and brisk towards us. He smiled grim at me. I smiled back.

He stopped abruptly right in front of us. I smiled even wider at his clothes.

No insignia or rank on his uniform of desert combat khaki, but it was starched and pressed as if just out of the cleaner's.

The smile dropped off his face as if too heavy for the moment.

"Next time, McCord, you see me about to be killed, let me die. I do not want to go through something like this ever again. Dealing with bureaucrats is like being nibbled to death by ducks."

{Swartzkoph tells Samuel that he will be leaving FEMA and New Orleans in two weeks, not being able to follow orders given him by President Bush. Sam tells him not to worry, that his jazz club will be open by then.}

Swartzkoph raised an eyebrow. “Hardly a priority, McCord, with all the hurting people in this city.”

“You misunderstand, General. I’ll be able to start my pay-per-view internet concert of the jazz greats. The profits from that non-stop concert will funnel into a Katrina Relief Fund.”

Swartzkoph seemed doubtful. “I don’t know how much money that will pull in.”

I smiled wide. “Worldwide? Quite a bit. When you factor in that most of the jazz greats playing will be dead ones.”

I called upon Elu’s and Rind’s blood within me and misty shapes began to form all around us. Young Louis Armstrong, cornet under his arm, slapped my shoulder.

“Be glad to be there, Sam.”

Dizzy Gillespie shimmered beside him, his trumpet sparkling in the starlight, his beret set at a rakish angle.

Jelly Roll Morten, his eyes dancing with “Spanish Tinge,” laughed at Swartzkoph’s startled jump.

Charlie “Bird” Parker winked at me, holding his saxophone tight.

Cigarette hanging from his lips, Duke Ellington drawled,

“You provide the piano. I’ll provide this old body. New Orleans is our mother. And we aim to be good sons.”

Swartzkoph looked a haunted question at me. He wanted to know who these spectral visitors were. And the hell of it was that I didn’t rightly know.

Just because I had summoned them, didn’t mean I knew.

Were they my friends drawn from my heart’s memory when they were young, or could I reach out into the night and bring them to a remembrance of shadows?

Think you know the shape of death? I did once. I was wrong.

I thought it a dark tunnel at the end of life, whose end was blazing light.

I found it to be a cloud that filled the horizon with flickers of black light and scarlet winds. Thickly it spills over ocean and land, sweeping up all in its billowing path.

And even that glimpse is misty, flawed with things my mind cannot contain.

I spoke softly to them. “Give me two weeks, and we’ll put on a show like none has ever seen before.”

Louis mopped at his forehead with a white handkerchief.

“Time ain’t what you think, Sam. Nor is the reason we’re here. You open those doors. We be there. Now, you owe someone a last dance.”

He turned to the others. “C'mon, Boys, we’ve got us an empress to play for.”

There was a movement of shadows to my left, and my heart hollowed out as Renfield breathed, “Dear Lord above.”

Meilori’s shade danced open-armed in front of me.

What does love look like? What is its color?

A white flash of fright. A billowing wave of warmth, its reach beyond the microscope and further than the length of hope. Is it a jewel sparkling in the night? Or a whisper murmuring within the corridors of the heart?

Once more Meilori danced across the velvet grass, her empty arms beckoning to me. Her soft voice carried like a specter in the dark. Her words brushed by me and into my soul.

“Beloved, one last dance.”

And I finally understood her dancing empty-armed that magic evening so long ago.

She had seen me, as now I saw her. Perhaps she thought me the ghost of a future me, dead and searching for her.

And not understanding completely, still she took me in her arms.

As I, not understanding completely, now took her in mine. She smiled, brushing soft lips against mine. And my jazz friends began to play in a heart-clasp of sound.

Love is not a shy beast to be caught but a rare moment to be treasured. It burns within each cell, a living seed of hope. Its rays invisible to most, seen only by the searching heart.

Meilori was in my arms, and her love was a sheath that kept me whole. She lightly kissed me. I almost felt it. We danced through the embrace of shadows. And for a very short moment, I was home. Home.
******************************************

BAD GIRL BLOGFEST

My work schedule has me once again entering the Bad Girl Blogfest a bit early.

But even so, I am happy to enter Andrew's Bad Girls Blogfest. http://blog.dawnsrise.com/2010/04/announcing-bad-girl-blogfest.html

But to be gracious, I'll be giving you two bad girls from my urban fantasy, LAST EXIT TO BABYLON. {the sequel to my fantasy, THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES.}

First we have Fallen, the Sidhe once called The Morrigan. But let the Ningyo {a race from another plane of existence}, Kirika, describe her :

"By the Haniwa, she was magnificent, terrifying, yet majestic all at once. Her long, honey-wheat hair tumbled down along either side of a face both haunting and dreadful. Her body was aristocratic and straight, the deep blue of her snug Prussian cavalry uniform taut across her fencer’s shoulders and firm breasts. Her elegant face was spotlighted by her high cheekbones and slanted fae eyes, gleaming green fires under hooded lids. The full moon burned in glints along the length of her long, black, rune-carved dagger. She smiled cruel, her wet, pointed teeth mocking us all."

And then, there's Kirika herself. Let's listen in on Fallen giving the Ningyo a pep talk before attempting a mission impossible :

"You are Kirika Amaterasu, empress of The Order of the Black Lotus. You were, and still have the spirit of, Empress Himiko. You are beloved of Blake, son of Adam, a mortal like no other, who believes in you, chose you, depends on you. And you will succeed in this task of freeing him from oblivion, for you have never truly failed. Never! And you will not start now!”

Somehow, she found my left hand and squeezed. “And because I stand with Fallen The Morrigan, goddess of the lust for life and the love of death, and ... sister of a very lucky Ningyo.”

“I -- am worse than you could possibly imagine.”

“Blake does not think so, n-nor do I. As much as I am jealous of you, sister, I - I love you.”

And with her words, the world flickered back into life around us. Her face beamed, and she gave my hand another squeeze before dropping it. She smiled like a little girl worshipping her older sister, making me ashamed of my using fae Glamour to heal her.

{Together they set out in the infamous night club, Kol Basar, a strange crossroads of dimensions and different times. They are off to find the legendary 3-sided chess game being played by Freud, Darwin, and Napoleon. A first step in rescuing the man they both love from limbo. Here is a snippet of their walk through the Kol Basar as told by Fallen.}

Kirika slung the Spanish guitar across her slim back, her eyes full of death. I moved beside her, trying to glide through the air with a menace that had filled Celtic hearts with dread for centuries. Kirika looked across at me.

“I feel as if I walk beside a lioness given human form.”

Before I could answer, the pathetic ritual began. What pathetic ritual? The one that always started whenever I walked into a room with men and alcohol. A swaggering samurai hoisted up on the belt that held his twin swords and winked at me.

“I know I could make you very happy,” he leered.

“Why,” I murmured, “are you leaving?”

A scruffy man in a battered fedora and stained khakis shoved the samurai aside. “Out of the way, loser.”

He flashed a wide smile that glowed white, appearing as it did in the midst of a two week’s growth of beard. But instead of me, he doffed his hat to Kirika. She looked underwhelmed.

“Go on. I know you want to. Ask me out.”

Kirika kept on walking past him. “Certainly. Get out.”

We walked through the cluster of glowing tables amidst the hoots of the samurai. A sound of a scuffle broke out. The rasp of a drawn sword. The snap of a whip. Men. So predictable. So full of ego.

A tall, wiry man in a black suit with wide lapels, wearing a hat with a wider brim, shifted his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the gun he wore in a shoulder holster. He strutted up to me.

“Where have you been all my life, doll?”

“Hiding from you.”

His face got hard. Unfortunately, his jaw was not. A fast uppercut and he went down to the floor with a loud thump. I stepped over him, trying for the grace of that lioness that Kirika had likened me to.

I had hoped that would put an end to our gauntlet. But male hormones are notoriously single-minded and short-sighted. I wonder how the human race has survived as long as it has. We traveled all of three paces before it started up again.

A musketeer, leaning on the bar to our right, reached out and stroked Kirika’s hair. “Haven’t I seen you someplace before, wench?”

She punched him once -- hard, four inches below his belt buckle. He went down huffing and squealing. She reached out and poured his mug of ale on his face.

“Yes, lout, and that is why I do not go there anymore.”

A bare-chested black man walked like a rooster towards me. He seemed to be wearing a woman’s hose on top of his head and more gold chains than Midas would have found decent. His baggy shorts went below his knees. His shoes were canvas. His fashions were unfamiliar. Sadly, his attitude was not.

He walked right up to me, looking me up and down. “Yo, mama, what it is?”

I locked cold eyes with his. “Unobtainable.”

His gold chains moved with a life of their own and began to strangle him. I turned to Kirika. She was oddly gesturing with the fingers of her left hand. Her face seemed a demon’s, as her hair floated around her head as if the air were slow moving ocean currents.

“You are alive only because I sense you were complimenting my sister. I, however, took it as an insult. Take your compliments and attitude far, far away.”

He staggered backwards, holding his throat where the chains were loosening. “Chill, mama! I didn’t mean nothing.”

Kirika murmured, “That is true, human. You mean nothing. To me. To my sister. And sadly, it would seem you mean nothing to yourself.”

Kirika turned to me, and her face grew long. “Fallen, in the not so distant future, we will very likely be taking on the entire clientel of this chamber of the damned.”

I nodded absently, my eyes ever roving for the three-sided chess game. “Yes, it would seem that our careers are certainly taking off.”

She rolled her eyes. “For once, be serious.”

“That is your end of our partnership, sister.”

“No! Listen. You have never faced the Amal. I have. When we round that cluster of tables, we must be holding hands. When we feel Blake’s fingers around ours and burn with that burst of love, the Amal will wither like mist under the rising sun.”

“You just say things like that because you are Ningyo.”

She stepped right into my face. “You are not as funny as you think.”

“You are not the first to point that out to me.”

“Why must you be like this?”

I reached out to stroke her cheek. She jerked away in anger. I sighed.

“I am who I am. If I let myself feel the fear that any sane person would have at this moment, I will freeze up. Blake needs me --”

“Needs us. Oh, you do not fool me, sister. You know this is suicide. You mean to part from me in the midst of the slaughter, draw the dogs after you, keep me alive -- for Blake. He needs us both or neither.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I need you. Do not leave me. Please, promise me when it begins that you will not leave me.”

I drew in a deep breath. “I promise -- to do what I think will best insure Blake’s return to this reality. And I expect you to do so as well. And if that means leaving me to die alone facing the assembled hordes of Hell, I expect you to do that.”

“I - I cannot promise that.”

I smiled bitter. “Well, no one is perfect. Come, let us beard these infamous Amal of yours.”

There was another uneasy silence between us as we floated upon feet that barely felt the floor. Heads turned as we walked like lions through jackels. I ignored them. All I felt was Kirika’s eyes on me. It was odd. Beating through my head, my very blood, was a gypsy song I had heard once as I preyed along the Balkins, Canto Alla Vita.

“I sing to Life and to its tragic beauty,

To pain and to strife, to all that dances through me

The rise and the fall; I have lived through it all.

Canto alla vita

Negli occhi tuoi riflessa

Facile e infinita

Terra a noi promessa.”

Kirika turned to me. “That -- that is beautiful.”

I was shocked. “You heard it, too?”

“We are linked. Through life, through death, ever shall we be sisters, the moon and the sun, destined to share the same sky, to be alone in our love for it.”

“I take it back. You are not a disillusioned romantic. You are simply a romantic.”

********************************
For Donna and Andrew, who wanted a truly bad girl, here is Nyx from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURE {Sam has just been told the back of his club has been invaded by Nyx who is forbidden in Meilori's.}

Toya, Meilori's manager, rasped, “Is she really the -- the personification of Chaos, the madness that existed before all Creation?”

I shrugged. “To hear her tell of it, yes. But when did you know any of the creepy crawlies who make my life interesting to tell the whole truth about themselves --- or anything for that matter?”

“So you don’t believe her?”

“I believe she wants to believe what she says about herself.”

“S-So she isn’t living chaos?”

“I - I think she’s something worse.”

“Worse? What could be worse?”

“Whatever she is, she’s bad. I’ve seen her lift an eyebrow, just an eyebrow, mind you, and suck the life out of every man, woman, and child in an entire city block.”

Toya paled even more. “God.”

“More in the opposite direction. I saw her whisper one word and wither the life from an entire crew of a Nazi submarine.”

“What was the word?”

“Hungry.”

Toya shivered, and I reached under my table. “Rind told me that once long ago Nyx screamed, and the Black Plague laid waste to most of Europe.”

“B-But that was a disease, and it took months to kill that many.”

“Historians weren’t there. Rind was, seeing as how it’s her job and all. Those thousands of people died in a day.”

“A day?”

“Yeah, a day. One terrible, terrible day.”

{Samuel takes the Spurs of Hephaestus out from under his table. To wear them is to feel bone-deep pain. But the pain of whatever wound is inflicted upon the wearer is felt by the person wounding the wearer of those mythic spurs. After some searching of his club, Sam finds Nyx at the Baccarat table, surrounded by dead players.}

I turned to the Baccarat table to my right. All the other players were withered corpses. That's what Nyx did to you if you lost. Or won, for that matter. She was a sore loser. Big surprise there.

Sitting high above the baccarat table, in a chair like a judge at one of those tennis matches, was a woman in a red Victorian-style gown. She looked like she belonged in a ballroom. But I knew what she was doing. She was the ‘floorman.’ Sitting in her polished oak chair, she nervously twirled a long oak paddle, used to scoop up the dealt cards and hand them to the players.

Directly below her, a short, slim woman in a skin-tight Harlequin costume stood with her fingers to her obviously terrifed face.

The Harlequin would have to be the caller, the one whose job it was to announce all the totals and proclaim the winner. She didn’t look happy with her job. She kept looking at the tall, skeletal woman to her right. The woman was human in looks alone.

She was Nyx.

If she had been alive, she would have been a very sick woman. But I suspected that she was undead, a very creepy kind of undead. Though, truth to tell, was there any other kind?

Long, black hair hung straight down each side of her old ivory face. She was nothing to write home about unless you were into frightening letters. She had gray, insane eyes, the same eyes that DayStar had. They said she was a law unto herself, that she recognized no code but her own hungers. To get in her way was to get dead - or worse.

Her tight dress fit her like a black leather second skin. It plunged down so low in the front I was sure that if she leaned forward, one of us was going to be embarrassed. And I had a feeling it wouldn't be her.

She seemed to wiggle without moving. Maybe if you were into kissing dead women, you would have found her sexy. Not me. I wasn't into necrophilia.

She was toying with her cute little necklace of tiny skulls and looking bored. I followed her gaze. She was looking at a tuxedoed man sprawled across from her at the green table. I smiled bitter. Once he had been called 'Mr. Lucky.' I sighed. Sooner or later, the cards always turned against you.

You might think it was just your life you lost when you played with Nyx. You'd be wrong. As I watched, Nyx reached out and touched the man, and another skull was added to her necklace.

“Next?," she laughed.

Nobody seemed eager to take the man's place. Who could blame them? She looked at me with hungry eyes and smiled.

You could starve off the difference between her power and DayStar's. And DayStar was the timeless dark personified. Nyx smiled wider, crueler. I hated powerful sadists.

There were two ways to deal with supremely powerful demi-gods. You could toady to them, kneel at their feet praying that they would only taunt and play with you, that the pain would be survivable. I made a face. Genuflecting was out. My bad knee and all.

That left the other way, and I forced a lazy smile. "Oh, a fan. I don't have a photograph on me, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks."

"Ape!," Nyx spit.

I quick held back the blessing to Hephaestus's spurs. And my world became white-hot agony. I had been in agony before. This was worse, much, much worse. I fell to the floor, squirming in spasms. I heard my customers scramble from their chairs. Some screamed. I would have, too. But the sheer torment had stolen my breath.

I heard the Harlequin cry out, "Please, Nyx, no. H-He was kind to me."

I didn't remember, but I did hear Nyx hiss, "You dare ask me for mercy?"

I had been too smart for myself. I thought whatever she would hit me with would still leave me breath. I had been wrong. But I heard the Harlequin cry out in terror. No! I would damn well find the breath.

I gasped out Hephaestus's blessing, "I-It is better to g-give than to receive."

Nyx reeled from her chair, hit the floor, and screamed her throat raw. The agony left me. But I knew my club, especially back here. I couldn't stay on the floor, though my trembling body begged for me to do so. I wrenched up to my feet to see a few of the predators heading for me. I glared at them.

"You know who I am. You've seen what I can do. You want me to do it to you?"

As a man, they took a long look at the squirming Nyx, the personification of timeless Chaos. Then they looked at me. They spun on their heels. I thought they would run for it. But the predators this far back were sadists.

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

Hope you enjoyed this stroll with three very, very bad girls. And when I think bad girls, I think first of Xena :

And the song Fallen sings in her head is one made popular by Josh Groban. I know that if I see the rights to LAST EXIT TO BABYLON, I will have to write my own song, but in my head I will always hear Fallen singing this :

WELCOME TO THE WONDER, LEVEN KHALE

Kelli Higgins, my pregnant co-worker, is pregnant no longer. Last night her son Leven Khale was born : 7 pounds, 20 inches. She is a new mother, facing all the questions novice mothers have faced since Eve. You know, the basics on the basics : Burping. Crying. Developing. Feeding. Growing. Pooping.

Kelli, if you're reading this, an excellent website by a pediatrician can be found here : http://www.baby-medical-questions-and-answers.com/ The doctor answers the basic questions for babies and toddlers as well.

Of course me, being me, I had questions. The kind that there are really no answers to. They called out to me like bells in the distance. When does thought begin for babies? Do babies think in the safe darkness? And if so, what thoughts were little Leven thinking just before things got bumpy for him? Was he content? Was he happy? Did he think this dark passage was going to go on forever? Why not? It was all he had ever known. Each stage of life is like that I think. We get lulled into a false sense of security by repeated life experiences, thinking that they will not change. But they always do. And most of us fuss like babies when wrenched into the next stage.

Is death like that you think? What awaits us at the end of that dark tunnel whose end is blazing light? Will we fuss like babies at what we find or gaze slack-jawed at the wonders awaiting us -- as Leven must be doing even now as he looks at the noisy, vibrant-colored world bustling with incomprehensible people all around him.

I was thinking this as I was driving home, the night snowing stars. I looked up into the endless sable depths beyond the moon. For a moment, I felt like the mountain wolf staring up into the sparkling universe, who never learns why he must live as he does. But still he sings to the moon, one lonely spirit to another. And in like manner, I sent up a prayer into the infinite night to He who shaped the moon and Leven to watch over him and smooth the path before him all his days -- and to keep an eye over you, Kelli, as well.

I'm currently listening to "Believe," the theme to THE POLAR EXPRESS, sung by Josh Groban. It's a song about renewing your childhood dreams and your life in the process. Check out his website : www.joshgroban.com/ It has a few surprises to it. If you want to listen to "Believe" by Josh Groban, here it is :