GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING_for FREE!

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!

M is for MEILORI_I AM MEILORI SHINSEEN, EMPRESS OF THE NINGYO SHADOW EMPIRE

No painting exists of me. No photo. This sculpture is the only Aztec carving I did not destroy.

The human, Angelina Jolie, comes closest to my bearing.

I am Meilori Shinseen, empress of the Ningyo Shadow Empire,

wife to Samuel McCord --

owner of the jazz club/dimensional nexus, named after me.

captain of the Texas Rangers,

King of fools,

and captor of my heart.

None have painted me and lived ... until my husband painted me with words. Listen to Samuel's description of me when we first met :

"I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two.

But no. She was of a different race entirely. The fog had thrown me off.

The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her.

She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to.

Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away. They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago.

There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both.

Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both beckoned and warned at the same time."

***

If you listen with your third ear, you will hear a young Marlene Dietrich singing of me in the decadent Berlin of 1927 :

"Want to buy some illusions,
Slightly used, second hand?
They were lovely illusions,
Reaching high, built on sand.

They had a touch of Paradise,
A spell you can't explain :
For in this crazy Paradise,
You are in love with pain.

Want to buy some illusions,
Slightly used, just like new?
Such romantic illusions --
And they're all about you.

I sell them all for a penny,
They make pretty souvenirs.
Take my lovely illusions --
Some for laughs, some for tears."

Frederick Hollander wrote that for me. Marlene sang it at my table in her black tuxedo. Samuel held my hand -- and my heart -- throughout the song. It did not help.

I am Meilori Shinseen. I am Ningyo. I am Empress.

And I alone know the dark end of my song -- and Samuel's.
***

Why WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

Why the title

WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

All writers I believe write in the crosshairs.

If you have beta readers and have submitted to agents/editors, you know the feeling of being in the crosshairs of their evaluations.

Ouch. But no pain, no gain.

But I am thinking of the imagry of the hunter.

He fixes his aim at his target, looking through his scope.

The image is hardly crisp at the beginning. He must adjust the lens to achieve crisp clarity and the best chance of hitting his target.

Writers are like that hunter.

At first the image of our tale is blurry. We tighten the focus with revealing dialogue, vibrant characters, engaging crises, and creative descriptions. Pacing and plot tighten the image even more. Sometimes we get it with dead-on clarity. Most times we don't.

No one but Shakespeare is perfect. If you don't believe me, ask Harold Bloom or any university English professor.

It is a tricky endeavor writing in the crosshairs.

How do we focus quicksilver humans into concrete mental images?

Take flames. They look like objects but are really processes.

Humans are like that as well. No human actually is complete. He or she is in the process of becoming.

But becoming what? We answer that question with our choices.

But there is more to my title than that.

We all write the movie of our lives in the crosshairs.

That endeavor is more tricky. We don't get the luxury of time to reflect, muse, or ponder at leisure. Life is a harsh mistress.

As we struggle, she flashes us that "beauty-queen" smile : all sharp teeth and no heart. And in her games of chance, the House ultimately wins.

Like Indiana Jones we must make it up as we go along.

We plan and prepare. Life gleefully throws her monkey wrench into our preparations. We must write our lives in the crosshairs of illness, accidents, dysfunctional humans, and our own inner demons.

We are all in Life's crosshairs, and none of us know when she will pull the trigger. We just know that she will.

This is what my blog is all about :

how to maintain a measure of grace and peace in the crosshairs of Life. I haven't figured it out yet. Let me know what helps with you.

I am currently listening to "Mourning Tree" by Leaves' End.

The romance of my haunted, undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, and his immortal love, Meilori Shinseen, has echoes to it of the tragic love of Arwen and Aragorn.

Here is a music video I think you may like :
***

DOES DEATH WEEP AT CHRISTMAS?

Here is my entry for Ellie's CHRISTMAS TALE BLOGFEST :
http://elliegarratt.blogspot.com/2010/11/christmas-tales-blogfest.html

{This is my spectral Christmas tale,

spotlighting Samuel McCord, the man with the blood of Death in his veins.

DayStar, his Moriarity if you would,

is the being from outside Time itself who has the peculiar delusion that he is Lucifer.

Samuel is the narrator.}
It was Christmas Eve. A lonely church bell was tolling midnight in the silvery distance. Meilori's was dark.

I had sent everyone away. No one but me to die when my Christmas guest arrived.

DayStar has announced his coming earlier that evening :

A dead baby in a manger with the word "Midnight" written in blood on its tiny forehead.

The ceiling speakers murmured the recording of Meilori playing the "Moonlight Sonata." She had left me with only haunting memories and this one lone recording the night she walked out of my life.

The lights died. The music stopped. I straightened in my chair. My last showdown. It came to every Ranger. Time to face it with courage.

"Hello, DayStar," I smiled.

A tarnished gold voice sneered in the darkness, "Hello, Samuel. Ready to die?"

"I died seven years ago."

"Ah, yes, when your beloved Meilori stormed out of your life. Wasn't she the one who professed, though she were dead, still she would be at your side at the end?"

I watched him shrouded in shadows, just barely making him out. He looked this way and that.

"The end has come and look : no Meilori."

"You're wrong."

I tapped my chest and head. "She's right here and here."

I sensed more than saw him approach my table, the sound of his steps steady, firm and unrelenting.

Heard the chair opposite me being pulled out. Felt as well as heard him sit down in the plush leather chair and neatly arrange his clothes.

"Armani if you are wondering, talking monkey."

"Only the very best for the very worst."

He laughed as if I mattered. I smiled back as if I gave a damn. We both weren't fooled.

DayStar’s words were little more than whispers,

"Once the world lived by night.

The dark drew people together. Under its cover, they could feel the need for each other.

But I gave the night to the predators, kept for myself the day so that the living could look into eyes filled with fear and hatred.”

I fought the urge to challenge his delusion. I reminded myself of Jung's warning that challenging the delusion of a madman only made matters worse.

And when said madman had the power to wither a man with just a whisper, making things worse seemed like a poor game plan.

I shrugged. "You see what you look for.

His smile flashed like a knife from out of the shadows. "You still die alone."

A boy's happy laugh sounded from just outside Meilori's.

Strolling easy through the saloon doors like the wild gypsy he was, Victor Standish laughed as if at the funniest joke in the world. "Wrong! Boy, would you be lousy on JEOPARDY."

"Victor," I snapped. "You promised you'd leave."

He flashed me that scamp's smile of his. "And I left. I never said anything about not coming back."

Alice Wentworth solidified beside him, and he stiffened, "You promised to let me come alone."

Her neon-blue eyes sparkled with the burning love that only the young can have.

"And so I let you come alone. But there is nowhere you will go, Victor, that I will not follow. Not even to meet the devil himself."

DayStar laughed as if all his dreams had come true. "Oh, Samuel, you get to see the young lovers die first."

Victor shook his head, picking up the now living, giggling baby from the manger.

"Sorry to disappoint you, your Hind-Ass. But Mother promised me she'd pass over this place tonight."

His face went as hard as his past life. "You know like she did way back when in Ancient Egypt."

His gypsy's face lit with a grin.

"When your Mother is the Angel of Death, well, let's just say her Christmas presents can literally take your breath away ... or not."

Alice hugged him. I wanted to. Instead I just winked in approval.

And that is how DayStar had his second-worst Christmas Eve.
***

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.
******************************************

WHY "WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?"

Why the title WRITING IN THE CROSSHAIRS?

That is the question I've recently been asked by two blogging friends.

So I thought others might be asking the same question. So here is my answer :


All writers I believe write in the crosshairs.

If you have beta readers and have submitted to agents/editors, you know the feeling of being in the crosshairs of their evaluations.

Ouch. But no pain, no gain.

But I am thinking of the imagry of the hunter.

He fixes his aim at his target, looking through his scope. The image is hardly crisp at the beginning. He must adjust the lens to achieve crisp clarity and the best chance of hitting his target.

Writers are like that hunter.

At first the image of our tale is blurry. We tighten the focus with revealing dialogue, vibrant characters, engaging crises, and creative descriptions.

Pacing and plot tighten the image even more. Sometimes we get it with dead-on clarity. Most times we don't.

No one but Shakespeare is perfect.

If you don't believe me, ask Harold Bloom or any university English professor.

It is a tricky endeavor writing in the crosshairs.

How do we focus quicksilver humans into concrete mental images? Take flames.

They look like objects but are really processes. Humans are like that as well.

No human actually is complete. He or she is in the process of becoming.

But becoming what? We answer that question with our choices.

But there is more to my title than that. We all write the movie of our lives in the crosshairs. That endeavor is more tricky.

We don't get the luxury of time to reflect, muse, or ponder at leisure. Life is a harsh mistress.

As we struggle, she flashes us that "beauty-queen" smile : all sharp teeth and no heart. And in her games of chance, the House ultimately wins.

Like Indiana Jones we must make it up as we go along.

We plan and prepare. Life gleefully throws her monkey wrench into our preparations.

We must write our lives in the crosshairs of illness, accidents, dysfunctional humans, and our own inner demons.

We are all in Life's crosshairs, and none of us know when she will pull the trigger. We just know that she will.

This is what my blog is all about : how to maintain a measure of grace and peace in the crosshairs of Life. I haven't figured it out yet. Let me know what helps with you.

It is also about how to deal with the insanity of being an author. Insanity?

Yes. What reasonable person would like to become a city of demons, inhabited by protagonist, antagonist, and a host of shadowy secondary characters?

What sane person would spend the day and night, speaking in tongues? Tongues of hero, villain, and in-between?

It is true that the world seems to value most what is highly morbid. Yet the world is different than what it seems to be. And we are other than how we see ourselves. How then can we write well of others?

That is also what this blog is about.

The purpose of this blog is to remind us just how difficult it is to remain just one person, that most important person : ourselves -- true to the dream that inspires us.

That is the wonder of this blog, of all blogs really : our home is open; there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.

But so is it with our novels. My blog hopefully will help you learn to become a better host.

I am currently listening to "Mourning Tree" by Leaves' End. The romance of my haunted, undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, and his immortal love, Meilori Shinseen, has echoes to it of the tragic love of Arwen and Aragorn. Here is a music video I think you may like :

I AM MEILORI SHINSEEN, EMPRESS OF THE NINGYO SHADOW EMPIRE

2nd day entry to GUESS THAT CHARACTER :

http://jennifer-daiker.blogspot.com/2010/08/guess-that-character.html

No painting exists of me. No photo. The above is the only Aztec carving I did not destroy.

The human, JC, came closest to my bearing.

The humans, Talli and Rayna, made me consider allowing Angelina Jolie to portray me in a movie.

The human, Olivia, first correctly guessed my name :

I am Meilori Shinseen, empress of the Ningyo Shadow Empire,

wife to Samuel McCord --

owner of the jazz club/dimensional nexus, named after me.

captain of the Texas Rangers,

King of fools,

and captor of my heart.

None have painted me and lived ... until my husband painted me with words. Listen to Samuel's description of me when we first met :

I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two.

But no. She was of a different race entirely. The fog had thrown me off.

The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her.

She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to.

Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away. They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago.



There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both.

Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both beckoned and warned at the same time.

***

If you listen with your third ear, you will hear a young Marlene Dietrich singing of me in the decadent Berlin of 1927 :

"Want to buy some illusions,
Slightly used, second hand?
They were lovely illusions,
Reaching high, built on sand.

They had a touch of Paradise,
A spell you can't explain :
For in this crazy Paradise,
You are in love with pain.

Want to buy some illusions,
Slightly used, just like new?
Such romantic illusions --
And they're all about you.

I sell them all for a penny,
They make pretty souvenirs.
Take my lovely illusions --
Some for laughs, some for tears."

Frederick Hollander wrote that for me. Marlene sang it at my table in her black tuxedo. Samuel held my hand -- and my heart -- throughout the song. It did not help.

I am Meilori Shinseen. I am Ningyo. I am Empress.

And I alone know the end of my song -- and Samuel's.
***

A REMEMBRANCE OF SHADOWS

Some of my friends have emailed me, asking me to do another encore of a haunting episode from FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE.

A blood vessel in my right eye has burst. A migraine is going Krakatoa inside my throbbing head. And tomorrow looms with another grueling blood run gauntlet. So if you'll forgive me another encore, here is REMEMBRANCE OF SHADOWS


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.

{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.
******************************************
As I stated before, I am a fan of old Hollywood classics. Some consider the concept of romance outdated and old. And it is old -- as old as myth, as enduring as the lonely heart's quest for its soulmate, and as fragile as the bodies which house those souls we love.

A FROST IN THE BLOOD

A frost in the blood.

Message novels are that ... and more.

Yesterday's post might have given some the idea that I thought good novels had to say something meaningful.

No.

As at the end, I will say again : the best novels are the ones that ignore overt messages and simply tell a very good story : one that touches the heart and haunts the soul.

You live your whole life, your face set on the course of a destiny you think you know. Then, fate smiles sadly and draws back the curtain on a reality that spins you around 180 degrees.

Life. Ever changing. Never static ... even when it appears so.

Vampires. They appear static. Never aging. Never leaving the public's fascination either. ECLIPSE is coming out this upcoming week.

As a nod of acknowledgement to the TWILIGHT phenomenon, I present McCord's first meeting with Prince Strasser, the revenant (vampire), who will hound the Ranger all his days. I find sparkly good-hearted vampires a bit hard to swallow so I made mine the predators that I thought they would naturally be.

The meeting is from RITES OF PASSAGE. McCord has just met the Sidhe wearing the face of a murdered girl. But he has found she is as much a victim as Rachel. Perhaps more so, since she is still alive to suffer.

He is awaiting Meilori for breakfast. Fallen, the Sidhe wearing Rachel's face, has joined McCord at his table. Sitting at the other tables in the ship's dining room are revenants, confident that they can easily kill a white-haired human :
*********************

Fallen whispered, "All is Tohu and Bohu, void and without form, a cry of a dying child signifying nothing."

"Thanks for sharing that with me."

She looked at me as if wanting to cry. "Must you learn life like a foreign language?"

I tried for a smile; it came out crooked. "You must be related to Elu."

Her lower lip quivered for a brief moment. "I am related to the worst person you could possibly imagine."

"Relations don't matter. What you do long enough becomes who you are."

She sat back. "Most people think from word to word. No wonder Rachel felt about you as she did. You think from word to fact. A rare gift."

I saw the aristocratic fop at the next table throw his napkin down in disgust. He rose as if a spotlight were on him. He strutted his way to our table.

He sneered, "So The Gray Man's bitch makes her entrance?"

I picked up a knife from the setting before me. "You'll not talk that way about a lady."

"Indeed?," he smirked.

With a wide showing of teeth, he said, "Mind if I sit down?"

"Would it matter if I said 'Yes'?"

"Certainly not."

"Then, go right on ahead. This way, I have the illusion of free will."

As the fop sat down, Fallen smiled her first warm smile at me. "How utterly quaint. To deceive by misplaced abstraction."

I smiled back, not knowing what the devil she meant, but glad to have taken some of the pain away from her eyes. Odd. She wore Rachel's face, and I should have hated her. Yet, somehow, I felt she was as much, if not more, a victim as Rachel.

She turned to the fop. "Strasser, --"

"Prince Strasser."

"Strasser, I have traveled the American West many times. And Captain McCord is much like the weather-beaten sign I read at the 3 R Ranch : 'Welcome, stranger. If you're peaceable, I'll take care of you. If you are not, I'll take care of you, too.'"

Prince Strasser sneered, "Is that supposed to fill me with fear?"

Fallen's smile was that of a shark's. "Only if you were intelligent."

She rose graceful as a swan and turned to me. "I had not expected to leave this table feeling for you as I do. How utterly quaint."

She spun elegantly, her full gown filling out around her. I watched her leave with sadness. Somehow, I felt our next meeting wouldn't end so well. I sighed. Sometimes, life twisted back on you like a rattler.

Fallen stopped at the bottom of the grand staircase, and with her rippling brook voice, said, "Samuel McCord, I have noticed that victory can be secured even in the darkest moment with slow decisions, gentle wisdom, and restrained passion."

And with that, she climbed the velvet stairs with a melancholy air as Strasser snorted, "Advise from a Sidhe? As false as their gold coins."

His right eyebrow arched with contempt. "By the way, McCord, do you know what the learned men of today's world say marks humans from the rest of the animals?"

"Not that I recall."

He pulled his lips wide. "The ability to recognize themselves in the mirror. What do you see when you look in the mirror, Ranger?"

He obviously couldn't find any flies to pull wings from, so he was needling me. Let him. Better men than him had gone at it.

I smiled back, "A friend."

I nodded to him. "What do you see? Oh, that's right, judging from that uneven tie of yours, I reckon you can't see much of anything, can you?"

Srasser's eyes became slits. Right then, the nervous waiter, Timmons, walked up to the table, shakily carrying a silver tray with a full pitcher of iced orange juice and an empty wine glass. He hesitantly put them down beside me. Then, he hurried away. I didn't blame him. The company at the table was certainly lacking.

The light of the rising sun from the central well above us flickered hungry fires in Strasser's eyes as he said, "You are outnumbered. You would do well to keep a civil tongue in your head lest you lose it."

I nodded. "Sounds like good advice. Were I a man that took good advice I might even take it. But I never met a Ranger yet that took advice, good or otherwise."

I poured a small amount of the orange juice in the glass. Strasser's eyes followed my hand as I brought up the goblet to my lips. For once, I did it just right : letting the juice flow for the briefest of moments across my tongue before swallowing. I sighed. It tasted wonderful. Strasser was glaring at me.

"Everything you drink tastes like pus, doesn't it? Not exactly how the dime novels tell it, is it? But then, you know all too well that being undead is all sham. The ligaments shrivel; the cartilage wears paper thin. Each move is agony. Your withered organs begin to smell so that even your over-powering cologne won't cover it up."

"Mock the fire, and it will burn you, cowboy."

Timmons came up to the table again, looking even more uncomfortable. He held a tray with a wine goblet, filled with red liquid. My nose picked up the copper scent of blood. Timmons placed it down before Strasser.

The revenant licked his lips. "Ah, my Haima. A most wonderful blend."

Timmons said, "I-It looks like blood."

Strasser smiled wide. "Indeed, it is."

He took a deep sip and smiled wider, his sharp teeth red-smeared. Timmons looked in horror, first at the revenant, then at me. He started backing up.

"Do not leave just yet, little man. Do you not want your tip?"

Timmons stopped, and Strasser chuckled, "Here it is, churl. Do not ever let me find you alone in the hallways."

Timmons nearly ran backwards from our table, as Strasser laughing, drank deep again. "Ah, an acquired taste but addictive, nonetheless. The blood of a twelve year old virgin girl. Oh, McCord, you should have heard her mewings."

I just sat there, forcing all emotion from my face. Strasser chuckled. He looked over his shoulder at his companions from the table he had left. His sneering body said it all : 'See how I have frightened the savage?'

He turned back to me, putting down the blood goblet. He smoothed his hand across the soft linen of the tablecloth, his palm flat against it. He sneered his contempt of me. Moving as fast as I could, I stabbed his right hand with the knife I still held, right beside and below his thumb. The fabled, lost 355th acupuncture point. Strasser screamed shrill ...

just like a little twelve year old girl.

It was a long wail of a scream. I twisted the knife to make it last longer. I smiled like a wolf.

I nudged it just to the right a bit. His scream cut off suddenly. Intense agony will do that to a man, rob him of the breath necessary to raw out his throat with the wail he was dying to scream but couldn't. I looked without mercy at him.

"You know, it's amazing how many people live their whole lives without paying attention."

I nodded down to his writhing hand. "Take the number five, for instance. Five fingers. Five notes in the musical scale. Five tastes for food. Five basic elements. Ever thought about that?"

I wiggled the knife a bit, and Strasser made little girl mewing sounds. "No, of course not. How many centuries have you wasted just existing, not thinking beneath the surface?"

I gave him a Fallen smile. "I'll tell how many. Too many. You talk educated, but it's all an empty show. Your lungs don't draw in oxygen. Even if they did, your heart no longer pumps blood to bring oxygen to your brain. How, then, does your brain keep on working?"

I sighed, "Do you know what animates your body that science would say is dead? Hell, do you know what even animates a living human body? No. You just accepted the fact that you existed and that you could prey on those weaker than you."

I heard low roaring in my ears. "You've preyed on little girls for so long you felt vicious and strong by comparison. You just think you're bad, Strasser. Now, me? I ... am ... bad."

I nudged the knife to give him the worst pain yet. "I could kill you right here, right now. But ... that ... would ... be ... mercy."

I tore out the knife in a splatter of thick, black blood. "And you don't deserve mercy."

He staggered up from his chair, hugging his limp hand to his chest. He looked down in horror. His right hand refused to move, hanging oddly limp at the wrist.

I shook my head. "It won't work anymore, Strasser. But if you're a good little boy all trip, I'll set it right for you. If I'm still alive, that is."

He flicked horrified eyes back to his slowly grinning companions. "Yeah, that's right. You're a maimed wolf now. And you know what the pack does to a maimed wolf, don't you?"

I almost felt sorry for him. "I think you better take up the art of learning. And the first thing I'd learn were I you would be diplomacy. Or running."

I gestured to his goblet. "Now, take your blood and get back to your ... friends."

He snatched the goblet, splattering drops of blood on the white tablecloth. "I will have my revenge for this."

I hefted the knife and caught it by the blade. "You want me to nail the other hand?"

He almost fell as he staggered backwards. I took no pleasure in the cruel grins his companions gave his back as he made his way to them. I caught their eyes and motioned to them with the knife. They stopped smiling.

**********************Word of warning to the Volturi : enter Samuel's universe at your peril. He shows mercy but seldom. Ask the Aztec dead of Meilori's. And no one plays with DayStar's toys.
{Something I read on http://jasouders.blogspot.com/ got my attention : You can check it out at hashtag #agentpay. It started off with a simple question posed by Uber Agent Colleen Lindsay. She asked, "How would publishing change if agenting moved from commission-based payment to billable hours?" What do you think about that, guys?}

MASKS

How many masks does your novel wear?

Each person we meet wears a mask. Beneath that mask lies several faces ... all true in different seasons. But those seasons are known only to the heart of the one wearing the mask. We have to guess.

Life is a masquerade. The dance steps are complex. And sometimes our feet get stepped on. Why should they not? Each person dances to the music they alone hear.

Sparked by K.M. Weiland's excellent post[ http://wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com/ }, I was looking at the masks in my historical fantasy, RITES OF PASSAGE.

Of course, my use of "mask" is a facade itself. I use it in one sense to mean symbolism. Do you use symbolism in your novel? Do you use the interweaving of names, objects, and experiences to stand in for universal truths in your story?

You don't have to. I do it for me. I do it for those who would re-read my novels and discover something new with each new visit.

The names in my novel mean something : Samuel from the Hebrew 'Shemu'el' : heard of God. Those in crisis and pain cry out to God in my novel, and in stalks Samuel.

Is he the answer to their prayers? I do not say. By the time of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, Samuel has become agnostic. The irony is that he, no longer having the heart to believe in God, is still the answer to the prayers of those in pain.

Meilori means 'beautiful laurel.' The irony there is that the eternal woman feels neither beautiful nor a winner {laurels were used in Ancient Rome to fashion victors' garlands.}

Google 'DayStar and Isaiah' to find the possible scope of Samuel's enemy. Another irony when you realize Samuel's eventual disillusionment with the being he calls the Great Mystery. The irony increases with FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, when Samuel's very lifestyle becomes Renfield's, the vampire-priest, main reason for clinging to the faith his best friend no longer has.

The transatlantic steamer Samuel finds himself on is the DEMETER, the name of the Greek Corn Goddess who in myth contends with Hades. Samuel befriends a little psychic girl on the voyage whom he likens to a small Corn Goddess. And she is instrumental in fighting DayStar.

The ship's voyage in itself is a symbol for the journey all of us take on the unpredictable seas of fate. Many of the doors aboard that ship take people to places far different than they expected ... just like the doors in our own lives.

Phrases are repeated throughout the novel. I will only state one example . Twice, once in the middle and again at the ending, DayStar gestures to Samuel when he means to sacrifice him and sneers Pilate's words, "Behold the Man."

{Go to my Bad Boy blogfest post to read the first incident.}

Masks.

They, too, are used as symbols in my historical fantasy : the young girl, Rachel, is murdered and her face removed to be used as a mask by the killer. Masks are worn by the passengers to hide their true motives for being on board. Some remove them. Some change masks. Others see through those of others. Still others realize that the face they thought was their own was, in fact, a mask worn to protect and conceal their fragile illusions.

At the end of the novel, Samuel has been run through with a broadsword. He is on his hands and knees, alone and dying. Elu's face appears to him in the spreading pool of his own blood. And the Apache shaman speaks to him.

{Elu’s words were cruel whips. “Where is the Dyami I remember? Or was he but a mask you wore when the battle was easy? Are you going to die like some beat dog on your knees? Or are you going to stand on your own two feet like the warrior Meilori believes you to be?”

His voice thickened. “What is it to be, Dyami? A beat dog or a warrior who bares his teeth at the approaching darkness and pulls his enemies down with him into that last night?”

I managed a crooked smile and croaked out, “Woof.”

Elu stiffened, then smiled so sad it was a pain to see as I used the butt of my rifle and lurched to my feet. Still I would have fallen if I hadn’t had the Pope’s broadsword to use as my second crutch. I swayed and almost fell. Somehow I stayed on my feet.

Taking in a ragged breath, I took one weak step. Then another.

My heart became stone as I heard Elu again. But he wasn’t speaking. He was singing. Singing my deathsong. I nodded to the growing shadows.

“Reckon so,” I said to the darkness.}

Those aren't all the symbols I used, of course. I don't want to bore you. I just wanted to ask :

Do you use symbols in your novel?

Are you aware of the underlying themes of your novel?

Those themes, those symbols are the rudders that direct the flow of your novel's story. If you are unaware of them, you are not in control of your narrative. And that's how novels run aground. Don't let yours be one of those that do.

Symbolism, themes, ironies -- they all work best when not noticed. Our major task as a writer is to tell a rousing, entertaining tale. Our main goal is to keep our reader on the edge of her/his seat, so caught up in the tension and striving that they find themselves lost in the narrative. And when they look up at the clock, they are amazed at how much time has flown by.

The symbolism, themes, and ironies mixed in artistically will add depth to their enjoyment of their reading without their ever really noticing them. They are the spices of the meal ... not the meat of it. The teacher in me adds them for my own pleasure. The artist in me strives to introduce them subtly and gently. I just wanted to ask you if you added symbolism, themes, and ironies to your novel as well.

*************
Odd to say, zombie movies can be symbolic of modern man's fears of civilization and progress reducing him to a puppet of the system, dead to the real meaning of life. However, I don't think this movie uses that kind of symbolism :

THE LIGHT BEYOND THE TEARS

Donna suggested in a comment here yesterday to publish a chapter a day of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. A nice compliment.

But if I do that, I won't be able to sell first publication rights to a publisher. Ouch. Other friends have emailed me, asking to read of McCord's first meeting with the mysterious Meilori Shinseen.

I thought I might give everyone a bit of what they wanted and show a scene that occurs in the third chapter of RITES OF PASSAGE :

CHAPTER THREE

THE TEARS OF A PHOENIX

"Dreams drift like clouds,

I reach to touch the moon,

I grasp but empty night."

- Lady Meilori Shinseen.



Tugging down the Stetson low over my eyes, I walked out of the cabin. As if to prove I still had some skill after the fiasco of the bathtub, I wrapped the threads of night around me. Crewmen, passengers, stewards, all failed to spot me as I moved silent among them. But the victory was too little, too late.

I felt empty, lost. Instead of going to where I heard the strains of classical music, I found myself heading up to the main deck. The night was calling to me. And something else within the darkness pulled at me :

An utter sadness so deep it was actual pain.

Someone was crying bitter tears up there. I felt its hot ripples like waves of acid breaking upon my spirit. Though a pitiful excuse for one, I was still what the Apaches called a diyi -- and something both less and more than human.

The Demeter was the most luxurious steamer upon which I had ever traveled, not anything like the cramped quarters of the Great Western. Aboard that vessel, I had shared twelve wearisome days in the close berth with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When the man in the next cabin died, I had quickly switched to it.

The pain up on deck stabbed at me with increased strength. Moving along the wide, shadowed deck, I followed the faint sounds of barely suppressed sobs. I walked cat-quiet along the empty promenade deck. I noticed that besides the three smoke stacks, there were two huges masts with billowing sails.

The Demeter it seemed was a hybrid -- like me.

I slowed as I spotted a woman, sitting right on the wooden deck by the railing. She was huddled over something. I wrapped the threads of night tighter about me and stepped closer. The faint smell of jasmine tickled my nose. She was in a long, flowing scarlet and black Victorian gown.

I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two. Another hybrid.

Her long black hair was styled up; her eyes were cast down. She was stroking a dead seagull, its slender neck bent awkward. I guessed that it hit the rigging in the fog, killing itself and tumbling to the deck.

The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her. What was I getting myself into?

Her words were almost lost in the night. "Poor little creature of air. Like last month, I came upon you too late. Too late."

She spoke as if the two words were a summing up of her whole life. She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to. Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away.

They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago. Maybe mine looked the same.

There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both. Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both called and warned at the same time.

She kept on stroking the dead bird. "Whyever did I listen to Inari and come to this accursed vessel in the first place? I had foresworn vengeance and death long ago. Now, look where breaking my vow has led me."

She stroked the bird's head tenderly as if afraid of waking it. "Oh, to be able to go back to that world of wonder I had before I became wise and unhappy."

She held the limp bird up to her breast and sighed,

"Dreams drift like clouds,

I reach to touch the moon,

I grasp but empty night."

I felt like I was intruding, but I couldn't force myself to step away as she placed the bird back down to her lap and whispered in an accent even stranger than the one before, "Little creature of air, I came upon thee just in time to see thee die. Thou art a symbol of my life, a symbol of the futility of all my days."

I couldn’t take her pain any more and dropped the threads of night to step forward. "Not futility, ma'am."

She hushed in a breath as if to scream, stared at me for long silent seconds, then forced out, "I - I did not see you -- Westerner."

"I'm a Texas Ranger, ma'am. We don't learn to move quiet, we don't live very long. I mean you no harm."

Her face became twisted with self-loathing. "You could not harm me any more, mortal."

"You're right there, ma'am. I couldn't bring myself to muss a hair on your head - which is why I couldn't just walk away back into the night before I told you the truth."

Her lips curled bitter. "And just what is this truth?"

"That you came just in time to give that little bird a precious gift."

She sneered, "And what gift would that be?"

"It got to die in the arms of one who cared and cried over its passing. How many of us get to die that loved?"

Her face flinched as if I had slapped it. "Not ... very ... many."

I tugged down on the brim of my Stetson. "Yes, ma'am, not very many at all. You weren't futile. You were a blessing."

I turned to go, and she called out to me. "What is your name, Ranger?"

Something told me to keep on walking, but I turned back around, my loneliness overcoming my caution. "Samuel, ma'am. Samuel McCord."

Her face grew haunted. "Samuel, from the Hebrew Shemu'el, 'God Has Heard'."

Her eyes searched mine. "Is your coming a portent that He heard me last month?"

"He always hears you, ma'am. The trick is are you listening?"

Her smile flashed briefly like the gleam of a knife slashing from out of the darkness. "And do you listen, Samuel?"

The way she said my name was like no other way it had ever been said. Her voice sent tingles along the scalp at the back of my neck. I rubbed it self-consciously.

"Me, ma'am? No, I'm too stiff-necked for that."

"Please stop calling me ma'am. It makes me feel my age."

"Well, ma-, Miss, what is your first name?"

She stiffened like I had stepped across a taboo. And most likely, I had. I cursed myself. Of course, she was a fine lady of some Oriental court or some such, and here I was just a weathered, landless lawman.

Her face closed like a fist. "Those, who are permitted, call me Meilori."

Pain flickered in her green eyes. "Meilori, Beautiful Laurel. Did you know, Samuel, that laurel leaves were used in Ancient Rome to fashion victors' garlands?"

Her full lips twisted in bitterness. "Even my name is a cruel jest on the emptiness my life has become."

"Or maybe -- Miss, it's just a promise pointing to the victory your life could become if you don't give up."

Her eyes became hot jade. "And have you never wanted to give up?"

The knife of remembered despairs rammed home into my heart. “Too often.”

I shrugged. "But I could never find the place where you could go to do it."

She stiffened, and so did I, expecting a harsh comeback. But she just sputtered in a burst of sad laughter, born of pent-up tension and pain. It sounded like a rippling brook given life.

"Oh, Samuel, it is you who are the blessing. A Trojan Horse that held more than the death and shame I had first supposed. And ... call me Meilori."

A voice both silky and dangerous spoke from the darkness to my right. "Laughter, Meilori? I have not heard that from you in so long I believed I never would a--"

The tall woman in the green and gold Victorian gown stepped out of the fog and stopped in mid-sentence. Her fingers went to the odd necklace of tiny, elegant mirrors about her neck.

She stared at me. I stared back. It might have been impolite, but it wasn't every day you saw a lady whose shadow told the truth behind the illusion.

Behind her head was a shadow, not of a woman’s long hair, but the wrinkling muzzle of a fox. I forced the shock and fear from my face. She wasn't the first Animal Person I had met in my travels. But Elu had taught me in the Pajarito Mountains that the fastest way to get dead was to show weakness or fear in front of them.

I sighed. Elu had tried to warn me this hunt was different. But I never listened - until it was too late.

The fox-woman pulled herself up stiff and bristled, "And what do you think you are looking at?"

Obviously, she had woven some spell that disguised her from humans. Unfortunately for her, I wasn't human ... not anymore.

But there was no point in letting on I could see through her disguise, though her look said she had guessed I could. Best to keep her guessing.

"Reckon I'm looking at the Lady Inari your friend mentioned."

I saw her feral eyes narrow. I sighed as I looked deeply into them. Though they glittered with the promise of violence, they held depths hollowed out by pain and grief.

She cocked her head at me, her eyes opening in more ways than one. "Compassion from a human?"

"Has that really been so rare, ma'am?"

"Yes."

I nodded. "For me, too, for what it's worth."

Lady Inari husked, "And how have you handled it, fleshling?"

"Badly. Got tired of being hurt, of being let down by hope. So I've retreated deep inside myself. Deep down where my spirit can't be destroyed completely."

Meilori asked low, "And does it work?"

"Not really. I got what I wanted but not what I needed. My blood-brother warned me if I keep on staying deep inside myself I’ll go blind."

Lady Inari frowned, "How blind?"

"Blind to all the things that make life worth living."

Meilori said, "I would like to meet this blood-brother of yours."

"He ... passed on."

She whispered, "Then, you, too, are alone."

Inari's head jerked up at that, and to keep things from getting out of hand, I said, "He's always with me."

Meilori nodded and looked tenderly at Lady Inari. "As with me as well."

That looked like it pacified Inari some, and Meilori turned to me. "It ought to be different for beings such as we."

"There is no ought," I smiled sad, "Life just is. You often time will find that things don't turn out the way you had planned."

The two women looked at each other. The twilight grew darker around them, closing me out. They seemed to be born to live in the night. "Twilight Women" Elu called them. He warned me to stay away from such.

Inari twirled the mirror-necklace around her slim, too long fingers, and Meilori sighed, "When will you ever put on another necklace? You have worn that dreary thing for thirty years now."

"A mere heartbeat for such as we, sister. But I must say you look better than when we parted but a moment ago."

Meilori flickered her eyes towards me briefly and blushed slightly. "I do?"

The Fox-woman smiled cruel, "So, Meilori, have you changed your mind about this cruise then?"

Meilori's eyes became chips of cold jade. "No, I still find no pleasure at the thought of killing fenced cattle."

It was my turn to frown. Meilori ignored me and rose gracefully to her feet, making a swam seem clumsy in comparison. Still holding the dead seagull, she walked to the railing, held out the dead bird, and dropped it into the ocean.

"May your spirit fly free and happy, little creature of air."

"Amen," I whispered.

She turned to me, smiling sadly, "You are a strange man, Samuel. Where one would expect roughness, there is a strong gentleness. And your eyes hold such sad wisdom. What brings you to this accursed vessel?"

I felt Lady Inari's feral eyes on me as I said, "Long ago, I ... lost my sister. Some years back, I delivered a tiny baby in a home being attacked by Comanches. The dying mother had me name her daughter."

Meilori's eyes seemed to bore into me as I continued, "I named her after my sister. Watched her grow into a fine young woman . Then, last month some monster killed her and sliced off her face. I've trailed the murderers to this ship."

Meilori went pale and husked, "Do you plan to kill them?"

"That depends on them. But I mean to get her face back. Set her spirit to rest. That much at least."

Meilori walked slowly to me and pressed her slender hand against my chest. "No, Samuel. You do not know what this ship is. Leave at the next port. You must. If this Rachel loved you, she would not want you to die."

I went cold. I hadn't mentioned my sister's name.

****************
And the song that reminds me most of Sam's and Meilori's love is this one from the Japanese animation GHOST IN THE SHELL 2 : INNOCENCE. And a phrase is mistranslated in the lyrics. It's "follies of the night" not "fun years of the night."

BAD BOY BLOGFEST/AMONG THE BONES YOU FIND ON THE BEACH, THE ONES THAT SING WERE MINE

It's already been a 12 hour straight, 320 mile day -- and I'm still on-call. So while I have a breather, I thought I would post my Bad Boy Blogfest entry. I'm on first call all weekend plus filtering, most of it solo duty. Whew!


Tina Lynn is hosting the Bad Boy Blogfest http://tinalynnsandoval.blogspot.com/2010/05/bad-boy-blogfest.html

Go check it out.


My entry is from RITES OF PASSAGE set in the Gulf of Mexico in 1853. The manner of speech back then was more courtly and this is reflected as best I could without hindering the enjoyment of the story. A note : Rasha is ancient Hebrew for "one who delights in cruel wickedness."


As the entry begins, the undead Daniel Webster and Samuel McCord are standing in front of the Grand Saloon of the Demeter. Inside a most unfriendly ball is being held. Samuel's friends inside will die unless he enters what promises to be a certain death trap ...



Daniel Webster stood brooding beside me. He wore gloom like some kings wore purple. He arched an eyebrow at me.

"Do you have a plan for this evening?"

"Kind of."

"And that would be?"

"I plan to make this Gray Man or DayStar as he's calling himself now as angry at me as I can."

Webster's face became tight.

"A threadbare plan, sir."

"Yeah, I'm all fired up about it, too."

At my words the golden doors swung silently inward. I sucked in a breath. The insides of the Grand Saloon had changed even more than its doors. Mists, cold and black, trailed up in weaving snakes from the blanketed floor.

Dancers swept one another along the huge chamber to the tune of some ancient melody that sounded somehow like it belonged in the palace of the damned.

And judging from the flat eyes behind the masks of the dancers, that was just where Webster and I were. True to his word, he slipped away from me, as if wanting to be clear of any fire drawn my way. Even though it was according to my plan, I still felt naked against the night.

I stepped light-footed into the chamber. As I walked, the dancers slowed, eyeing me hungrily. The golden doors closed shut behind me with a loud thud. The music stopped.

The dancers lined up on either side of the enormous chamber. The decor of the room had changed, too.

It looked ancient Egyptian with jackel-headed black stone guardians holding golden spears along the way. The mirrors to the walls were still there, but they were trimmed with cat-headed women.

A rich voice, like the tolling of bronze bells far off in the distance, laughed from the shadowed end of the chamber, "Dear followers, you have come to me, pleading to learn the pleasure of life and the ecstasy of passion. And perhaps I will teach you those."

Hollow laughter rose then faded. "But first, I choose to teach you this night something even more wonderful : the meaning of pain and sorrow and their beauty."

I kept on walking, feeling the lack of my Colts and knife even more than before. The mists thinned, and I spotted the bait to my trap. Meilori, Inari, Peter, Aziza, Cora, Greeley, Sir Lionel, and Count de Morny.

They were all seated in thrones of black iron, their wrists clamped down tight, their necks collared with razor-sharp nooses of diamond string. Bright tears of light gleamed from the tiny mirrors of Inari’s necklace. Blood trinkled down from the ivory throat of Meilori as she called out.

"Stop, Samuel! We are already dead. Flee while you still can."

"You should have spared your lovely throat, Lady Meilori," laughed the ghost-bell voice. "There is no escape for anyone tonight ... least of all McCord."

I didn't understand what the voice meant, so I just let it hang in the mists like the hot air it sounded.

"Well, DayStar, I can tell you like hearing yourself talk. Probably one of your greatest pleasures. I should've brought the plant from my cabin. All the manure you been tossing around would have been good for it.”

I stopped talking as a figure slowly appeared from the boiling clouds of black mist.

Tall, slender but muscular, he walked with the grace of a stalking lion. Dark gray curls frothed on his head, down upon his wide pale forehead. High cheekbones. Sensitive, soulful eyes. A young woman's dream - until she looked deeper into those glittering predator eyes, and her dream became a nightmare.

As DayStar, also called The Gray Man, smiled knowingly at me, I sighed. He looked so damn young.

When had all the people around me become so young? It seemed only last year that all the criminals I had hunted had been weathered and hardfaced. Now, all of them were children. Cruel, selfish, heartless children with rabid smiles and vulture eyes.

I looked about at the shifting, eager-eyed masked predators watching me as if waiting impatiently for a steak to cook.

These undead children made me want to take a bath all over again. Brittle sophistication, surface polish, and no insides at all. Just an unreasoning, never-satified hunger.

I studied DayStar. I had expected someone older. And as I looked, it seemed a veil was lifted, and I saw his youth was just a mask.

His eyes seemed to deepen, and they began to reflect an ancient weariness and deadliness, older than death and darkness, and echoing the longing for an ending to it all. I suddenly felt a kinship with him.

And that scared me even more than his children of endless hunger.


He laughed in hollow ripples, "Behold the Man. Man, bah! An endangered species from the very beginning. Not particularly fleet of foot - unless chasing another man's wife. No large teeth. No claws but his tongue. A wonder that he has survived this long."

I shook my head. "If you're expecting an argument from me, you've got a long wait."

He smiled at Meilori, who looked like she was going to be sick. "Listen to him prattle. Ordinarily, I would have little patience with his drivel. But tonight .... tonight, I sense the coming of the storm."

He gazed off into horizons only he could see. "I keep trying to persuade myself that it is unimportant that this Age is soon to come to an end. But when I think of the sheer pleasure of it all ...."

He shivered slightly. "Whole races exterminated by greed for gold, by gas oven ...."

His pale blue eyes sparkled. "It simply leaves one breathless."

He turned back to me. "Ah, man. What a hapless creature. In the strange twilight of the mind, man searches for himself, and when he has found his own image, he cannot understand it."

I nodded to my imprisoned friends. "I understand this : you give a lousy party."

He broke into real laughter. "I like you, McCord. What you lack in perspective and insight, you make up in sheer stupidity."

"Careful, you'll make me blush."

"There is no insulting you, is there?"

"You obviously have too much free time on your hands."

His eyes became deeper. "You have no idea."

"I have a few. Let my friends go."

He turned merrily to an even paler Meilori. "See, my little Rasha, behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul."

He turned back to me. "The end of a man's life is not action but contemplation. See, McCord? I give you the clue of this night, if you but have the wit to grasp it."

"My mind has slippery fingers."

He laughed as if his eyes would tear up. "Ah, you speak so true in jest."

His face grew even happier. "I trust you will not hold the rest of this evening against me, McCord. I but murder to dissect the truth."

"The truth of what?"

"Why, the truth of you, of course."

His gray eyes grew cold. "Where there is pain and sorrow, there is holy ground. In but moments, this marble will be holy indeed."

"Let my friends go."

"Why, of course. But first, surrender your weapons."

Meilori cried, "Samuel, do not!"

I pulled back my jacket. "I didn't bring any."

For the first time, surprise etched across his face. "McCord, can it be that there is actually a brain under those white locks of yours?"

Meilori, her eyes desperate, spoke loud, "Samuel, there is nothing wrong in what you will do tonight, but there may be wrong in what you become."

The Gray Man twisted just a bit to her. "Little Rasha, I would hate to terminate your existence. Do not task me."

I cleared my throat to draw his attention my way as I spotted Webster undoing the diamond noose about Lady Inari's throat. "You said first, just now. What's the second thing I have to do to get my friends clear of your little party?"

His eyes went straight to Lady Inari's bare, free neck, then back to me. "Nothing horrendous. Nothing bizarre. Something merely entertaining ... for me."

"I don't do party favors."

"You will if you want your precious friends to go free."

DayStar laughed, thoroughly enjoying himself. "I am beginning to get bored, McCord - which is dangerous for those around me. Bah, this stale chamber makes me yearn for fragrances fresh as the flayed flesh of children. Do not keep me waiting."

DayStar's pale gray eyes became openly insane. "I am growing increasingly bored. You have not given me your answer."

"Well, you haven't told me what hoop you want me to jump through either."

He brought up a hand to his lips like a child caught napping. "Indeed, I have not, have I?"

His eyes seemed to sink deeper in his mask of a face. "In honor of your Native American enemies, I propose a gauntlet."

Meilori sucked in a breath, and he went merrily on. "All you have to do is make it all the way down this sprawling dance floor in one piece ... more or less, and your friends will be released."

"If you aren't lying."

His smile got wider. "If I am not lying, that is correct."

He studied me. "I do not see where you have a choice."

"There's always a choice, DayStar.”

“The delusion of all mortals.”

He expected me to stall for time. I could see it in his face. Instead I snapped, “ Let's dance!"

And then, I ....

You'll have to read my novel to find out what happens next. Besides, this is a "Bad Boy" blogfest not a "hero" one. Hopefully, you were entertained a bit. If not, blame my light head and weary body. Have a great weekend.

IN SPEECHLESS CRIES OF NIGHT

And now I sail on lonely seas,
Where once the waves bore two;
And now I hunt,
But I hunt alone,
My hand empty, needing you;
Your name's a whispered blight,
The mocking winds reply
In speechless cries of night.
- Samuel McCord

There are few love stories out there. For me, at least.

Lust stories, yes. Lots of those. But love? Love that is a candle in the darkness? A haunting will-O-Wisp that lights the way even when she you loved is no more? I seldom see that kind of book.

You don't know what love is until you've learned the meaning of regret. You don't know what love is until you had to lose. You don't know how lips hurt until you've kissed and had to pay the cost.

Several of my friends have emailed me asking to see Samuel and Meilori together in a love scene. Their love is one that cannot win yet never dies. Here is a moment from RITES OF PASSAGE, set in 1853 when speech patterns were more formal, where time and tide seem to conspire to destroy the two of them :

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IN SPEECHLESS CRIES OF NIGHT

"Can you see any hope for us, my Samuel. I cannot."

- Lady Meilori Shinseen.

The cyclop eye of the moon peered down at us from the face of the stars. We had decided to look at the endless ripples of the ocean and stand on the deck where we first met. The strong breeze tasted of salt and storm. I watched it tug at Meilori's hair. She looked up into the velvet darkness and let out a sigh.

"Has it just been forty-seven hours since first we met, Samuel? I feel as if I see the world anew. How can so much have changed in so little time?"

My chest grew tight. I couldn't believe it. She was keeping count of the hours since we'd first met.

Just like me.

I wrapped my arm around her slim waist, fearing she would pull away. But instead, she leaned in against me. I felt a weight lift off my chest.

"A life can turn all about in just a pull of a trigger. Like when Father killed Mother ... or when I killed him."

She pressed gloved fingertips against my lips. "No talk of sorrow. Not tonight. This night is magic. Can you not feel it?"

I smiled. "You are magic, Meilori."

She shook her head. "We are magic."

She pointed and hushed, "Samuel, look!"

Off to our left, not ten feet away, three dolphins leapt high in the air, coming down along side us. They kept easy pace with us, repeating their graceful leaps. It seemed they were calling out to Meilori in their haunting cries.

I stiffened as she called back to them in the same strange, piping sounds. They answered in a longer squeal of cries. She turned to me, her eyes reflecting the glow of the moon.

"They say never have they seen a light as that which burns from you, Samuel."

She lightly kissed my lips, but pulled away before I could return the favor. “Last night, in my darkness, it was your light that brought me back.”

“Same here.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

She nestled her head next to mine. “The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of life -- or death. And to that hope will I cling.”

A more mellow, yet more strident, at the same time, cry came from the black ocean. We both looked towards the source of the eerie piping. A larger dolphin cut through the dark waves as if in a race for its life.

She leapt in front of the three other dolphin. She appeared mad or scared, or a little of both. Meilori grabbed my right upper arm.

“Samuel! She is warning that death and worse than death is on this ship.”

Her face seemed to grow longer. “It is the Ancient One. I have only seen her but once before.”

“When was that?”

Meilori shivered. “When the White Dragon, Yamashiro, transformed into the terrible Bird of Death, O-Goncho. He, whose cry is the howling of a wolf.”

The three younger dolphins mewed oddly, then dived headway into the rippling surface of the heaving sea. I waited for them to come back up. They never did.

The Ancient One gave one last cry of what sounded both warning and defiance, then slid under the black waters herself, not to be seen again.

Meilori shivered again, and I led her to a row of deck chairs facing a large wooden table screwed to the deck. She sat down as if her legs wouldn’t hold her for another minute. I sat back down beside her.

Squeezing her hand, I said, “Was she talking about The Gray Man?”

Meilori shook her head slowly. “Perhaps. His is the greatest power on board supposedly.”

“Supposedly?”

She took my gloved right hand in both of hers. “Oh, Samuel, the world of what Man calls the Supernatural is not the unified, coherent thing he supposes.”

She stared off into the cold night. “We dissemble, we plot, we stage diversions. But we know little of the races who war against us and one another. Quetzalcoatl and Kali are strong -- and devious. Them you know.”

“Not Kali.”

“You killed her nymphs.”

“My body did. As it kills anything that comes upon it unawares while I am asleep.”

She peered into my eyes. “How have you gone on all these years?”

I sighed. “There were always innocents naked before wolves. Without me, they would have been eaten.”

She patted the back of my right hand. “It sounds a lonely life.”

“It is -- was.”

She smiled sad. “For me as well.”

I looked deep into her eyes. “Do you know who killed Rachel?”

She stiffened and pulled away from me. “Inari says if you insist on following this hunt of yours to its conclusion, it will destroy you.”

She leaned forward, holding my hands in hers. “Oh, Samuel, forget this obsession of yours.”

“Right now, I have a lot of helpless passengers to worry about. They’re still alive. So for the moment, I’ve put Rachel’s murderer on the back burner. Me finding him -- or her -- won’t bring Rachel back. But me being side-tracked by hunting for a murderer could mean other helpless women and children dying.”

I felt my face tighten. “And I won’t be responsible for that.”

I turned to her. “Lady Inari. How did you hook up with her?”

Her eyes seemed to become deeper, less easy to read. “As you have said about Elu, it is not completely my story to tell. If she is willing, I will one day tell you.”

She shivered again, rising silent and somber. “The magic has gone from the night. I will retire to my suite.”

I turned to follow, but she put a hand on my chest and murmured, “Alone. There is much I must reflect upon.”

She looked out over the angry, black ocean, then turned back to me. “Can you see any hope for us, my Samuel? I cannot.”

I reached out for her, but she drew back, and it felt like she stabbed me.

I said soft,“I never learned to quit, Meilori. And I refuse to give up on you -- or us.”

She smiled with trembling lips. “Then, perhaps, there is hope for us yet.”

But the look in her eyes put the lie to her words. I watched her walk gracefully into the shadows. I felt my face go even tighter.

Not that I wasn’t a gentleman, but I figured I knew for sure that the revenants, (and who knew what else was lurking in the darkness of this ship), weren’t gentlemen or fair fighters. Keeping a respectful distance, I followed Meilori to make sure she made it to her suite in one piece.

Her jasmine perfume stirred uncomfortable desires inside me, but I pushed them back into the corner of my being. I was here for her, not me. I shadowed her as quiet and cat-footed as I could.

She slowed about ten feet down the deck, then stopped completely, her head down. She stood that way for long moments. If I still breathed, I would have been holding my breath. She sighed, as if coming to a decision, and turned to the walkway she had just passed. I hugged the shadows next to the wall.

Giving her time to put some distance between us, I slipped down the walkway. It lead to a set of stairs leading down to the main deck where the best suites were. I smiled. Leave it to Meilori to have the best. She deserved it.

I caught a whiff of her jasmine perfume. I crept faster after the scent, listening for her gentle footfalls. They were slowing. I gnawed my lower lip.

Trailing her wasn’t turning out to be easy. But if her slower steps indicated a preoccupied mind, I might have an edge. My stomach coiled.

But then, that edge would also belong to a would-be murderer. I hurried after the scent of jasmine a bit faster. Odd. The passageway seemed awful familiar. As I turned the corner, I stopped.

Meilori, a frown on her full lips, was waiting, arms crossed, right toe tapping, in front of my stateroom door. I swallowed with difficulty. This could get ugly. I forced my voice to work.

“I can explain, Meilori.”

“Indeed? I am waiting with bated breath.”

“You looked so upset. And I was worried for your safety. I was just going to shadow you to make sure you made it to your cabin safe.”

Her eyes glittered dangerously. “And the waves of passion I smelled coming from you?”

I tugged at my collar. “If I could think of a good lie, Meilori, I’d tell it to you. But --”

“But?”

“Your nose was dead on. Damn it, Meilori. It’s just hard to love you as I do and be so close to you, yet forced to stay away. It near tears me apart.”

She sucked in her upper lip over her teeth as if fighting some strong emotion, then she lost the fight. She laughed light like a little girl. I cocked my head.

“Y-You aren’t mad?”

She walked slowly over to me. “As soon as I sensed you behind me, I knew what you were doing, Samuel. And it came to me, then.”

“What?”

“That what you feared happening to me might come to you as well. And I was a fool to waste this night.”

She kissed me wild, fierce, her lips parted, her tongue running lightly over mine. “And sometimes, magic can be reborn.”

Her eyes became wider, deeper, as she husked, “Especially, if we work at it together. Are you willing?”

I had a flash of my cabin key on the bedstand. I smiled sheepishly at her. She frowned.

I rubbed a gloved hand over my burning face. “Ah, first, I’ve got to pick the lock.”
*********************************
Samuel can't seem to catch a break, can he? Here is a beautiful NIGHTWISH song, "Angels Fall First."