STUCK IN THE MIDDLE THE VICTOR STANDISH WAY

Denise and Donna have a new Friday Romantic Challenge:
http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/

This prompt is about the others in the romance couple’s lives DURING the break-up.

Inlaws, best friends, co-workers siblings, the kids and other immediate family. Anyone who has connected with the couple and is expected to choose sides when the relationship ends.

What we want to see (in 400 words or less) is how “the others” feel or is changed by the ending relationship,

and what they see as the strengths/weaknesses of the couple. We want to live the romance through a second party. (This is not a love triangle.)

Me, being me, I did it in 500 words. But this is Victor Standish's story, and you know how he is!

This is an excerpt from NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE:

Her eyes were dark with more than the night.

Yes, Meilori’s eyes were jade quarter moons waiting to rise. What made them dark was her soul steeped in hate … for me.

“Standish,” she husked, “what does it take to kill you?”

Why did all my enemies ask me that? As if I would tell them. A bloody Captain Sam had a trembling arm around her bruised shoulder. He was leaning heavily upon her.

The two of them escaped her sister’s trap by the skin of their teeth. They both looked ready to fall.

I was dribbling a bit of blood myself. They wouldn’t have made it if Alice and I hadn’t fought off Maija’s reinforcements. Captain Sam looked uneasily from her to me and back to her.

I sighed. Losing Meilori for 7 years to Maija’s deceit had almost gutted him. To lose her now after just being reunited would destroy him.

I felt my face go tight. Sometimes to save the ones you loved, you had to lose them. I sighed. I always knew that alone was my destiny. I turned to walk away.

“Time to surf the waves in California.” I whispered.

Alice cried out to Meilori, “Oh, Lady Shinseen, please do not send Victor away! I – I am bound to New Orleans. I cannot follow him.”

Meilori murmured, “You are better off without the gutter rat.”

Alice sobbed, “I will die without him.”

I kept walking, but Captain Sam called out, “Victor, no!”

Meilori snapped, “Samuel, he is your son not mine!”

I turned around. Uh, oh. Mother, the Angel of Death, was materializing beside a startled Alice. Sfumato!

There were a billion ways for this to go wrong. I didn’t think there was a single one for it to go right.

Mother smiled a thing of nightmares. “No, Ningyo. He is my son.”

Meilori smiled back. “Go ahead. Strike me down. Samuel will never forgive you. And I will have my revenge.”

I started clapping. Meilori turned furious at me. I smiled my skull smile.

“No, Your Brittleness. Your sister, Maija, will have her revenge on you. You will die. I will die. Sam will die inside. Alice will live an eternal Hell. And Mother will be denied us all after leading us to that bright light.”

I sighed, “All of Maija’s most hated enemies will die or be in torment.”

Meilori husked, “Maija is dead.”

“Really?” I sighed. “That would be a first. All my enemies, Maija included, are like damn cockroaches. You can never seem to kill them. Besides, Maija knows you. She knew what would happen when she set all this into motion.”

Meilori frowned, “What do you suggest I do, gutter rat? Learn to love you?”

I shrugged, “I’ll settle for tolerate me and love Captain Sam. That last will tie Maija’s panties in a knot even if she is dead.”

Meilori fought a smile and turned to Captain Sam. “I can do the last with all my heart. You live … for tonight.”

I smiled as if it were a raw wound. She talked as if my enemies weren’t going to kill me long before Christmas. Alice squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back. The trick was to live each moment until that last breath. Alice smiled with trembling lips as if thinking the same thing.

Three more weeks until Thanksgiving. No. I was holding the hand of my Thanksgiving right now.

{Exquisite art courtesy of Leonora Roy.}

SHAPE OF HER HEART_Friday's Romantic Challenge

She wears my ring.

That is Friday's Romantic challenge given us by Denise Covey:

http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/

This is an excerpt {444 words} from NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE (from a chapter told through the eyes of Victor Standish):

The shouting was deafening. "Mei-lo-ri! Mei-lo-ri!"

Sam and I hurried out of my room to the balcony, overlooking the front of the jazz club. I swallowed hard. It was filled to overflowing with Ningyos brandishing swords in a frenzy of devotion to the regal wife of my father, Sam McCord.

Sam rasped, "She wears my ring."

I looked up. "That's a good thing, right?"

"It is the ring of King Solomon."

I went cold. "The one that controls demons?"

Meilori answered for me as she called out to her devoted followers. "Long have you questioned me marrying a barbarian. But see? Now, I possess his ring that will have an army of demons sweeping the world clean of the filth of humanity. Clean for us to rule!"

Sam's face looked like he'd been gut-shot. "No. No."

Meilori's face beamed as she spoke, "When first I met the barbarian, he was wearing this ring. And I knew to possess it, I first had to possess him!"

This was ancient Greek tragedy plotting worthy of Medea or Elektra. I looked to Sam. He weaved as if faint. I went a little crazy. No one hurt Captain Sam when I was around.

"Yo, she-bitch!" I yelled, walking across the balcony, right up to her.

"No,Victor" rasped Sam. "You don't know the shape of her heart."

I said, "What shape does a vacuum have?"

Meilori sneered at me. "Speaks the bastard son of my husband."

I laughed, "Better than your son, your Hind-Ass. There aren't enough scalding baths in the world to wash me clean if I were yours."

She reared back her ring hand, her fingers now straight to slap me. Sucker. I moved through the seconds, plucking Solomon's ring from her finger, tossing it back to Captain Sam.

Beside Meilori, dagger in hand, her Prime Minister gasped, "Impossible! No one can take Solomon's ring as long as the wearer lives!"

I snorted, "Sure they can, your pompousness. Anyone who doesn't want the ring for him or herself can do ...."

Sfumato.

I saw it hit the Prime Minister as fast as it did me. With him standing behind Meilori, his dagger took on a whole new meaning.

This whole scene had been a ruse, planned by Meilori and Sam. Meilori could take Solomon's ring from Sam because she hadn't meant to keep it in the first place. This had all been a set-up to draw out the real ....

"Traitor!" snapped Sam, and I heard his Colt bark once.

The Prime Minister reeled to the carpet dead, the dagger still in his hand. Meilori arched a cool eyebrow to me.

"Standish, despite what the arrogance of youth believes, we adults know what we are doing."

Her brows knitted together dangerously. "Now, about that 'she-bitch' remark ...."

I sighed. Ever have one of those lives?

I DIED A MAN_Platform Builder's 1st Challenge

ONLY 2 MORE DAYS TO GET YOUR FREE GIFT!!

http://www.amazon.com/LET-WIND-BLOW-THROUGH-ebook/dp/B004ZZT0XE

http://rachaelharrie.blogspot.com.au/

Rachel wants us to create a 200 word flash fiction starting with "shadows crept across the wall" and ending with "everything faded." I edited a segment from my NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE {a WIP.} :

Shadows crept across the wall. Three Spirit Night. Cosmic conjunctions aligning.

Outside, this house on Dauphine Street offered no clue to the carnage that took place within more than a century ago.

Time was unraveling. The Nameless One who had breached the Cosmic barrier, killing the Turk called the Sultan was now entering the present.

Screams of dismembered harem girls. The trilling of the Nameless One. The Sultan racing past me out the back door, running into the gardens -- where the police would find him buried in a grave dug with his own hands.

The house was a nightmare. Body parts were strewn along the staircase. The wood floors were slick with blood.

There. Right in front of me, layered in wet orange scales. An obscenity of flesh and tentacle. I would stop this abomination from preying on the innocents outside.

Perseus. Gilgamesh. Beowulf. Simple men who fought monsters. But I was a monster.

Tentacles slashed. Hungry teeth gnashed me. I laughed. I tore off my right glove, grasping a tentacle. The Nameless One screamed. I kept on laughing though it smashed me into oak walls.

It groaned, dropping me. I smiled. I had died a man.

Everything faded.

***

The murders of the Sultan and his entire household occurred in 1834 along with the fire which consumed the mansion of New Orleans' Jill the Ripper, Delphine LaLaurie. For more of the Sultan's murder mystery :

http://www.nola.com/haunted/harem/hauntings/murder.html

***

I'M HEARING VOICES + FRIDAY ROMANCE CHALLENGE

BLOOD WILL TELL HAS JUST HIT #23 ON AMAZON'S TOP 100 BEST SELLING CONTEMPORARY FANTASY BOOKS!

http://www.amazon.com/BLOOD-WILL-TELL-ebook/dp/B0050219BW

I'M HEARING VOICES challenge is :

Emotion Flash Fiction -

Emotion is the engine of a story. Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words MAKE us feel it! We want to connect with your character.

It is also time for another Friday ROMANTIC CHALLENGE given by the always fascinating Francine Howarth and Denise Covey.

Today's theme is THE LONG, COOL APHRODIASIC.

My 400 word entry is from the sequel to my CREOLE KNIGHTS :

NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE (in the process of being written.)

The cosmic conjunctions have aligned. The Nameless Ones strain at the unraveling barrier between them and our world.

After 7 years, Maija has released her sister, Meilori, from the bubble of frozen time in which she encased her in a trap of deceit.

Why?

To see her face when she tells Meilori that her beloved Samuel McCord lies dead by the tentacles of an exiled Nameless One he killed before dying.

The undead rabbi, Ben Teradion, is comforting the devastated Ningyo. He is Death’s measure to stop the invasion of The Nameless Ones.

Maija turns to mock the rabbi with the truth of his role, not realizing you simply cannot kill a man whom Death will not take. Shrouded in the Threads of Night, Samuel McCord, bleeding and battered, stands invisible beside her :

Maija laughed. “Death saved you for tonight, rabbi, to speak the name God gave Himself, that when uttered outside the Holy Temple would rend the very universe.”

Ben Teradion said, “No!”

Meilori whispered, “Death has come to revel in the end of life. For her, the death of the entire universe would be ecstasy.”

Ben Teradion husked, “But then --”

Maija nodded. “Nothing stands in the way of the Ningyo Empire to re-enter our home plane.”

The rabbi cried, “No! The Nameless Ones would return to our world!”

“Who cares?”

Meilori gestured, black energy hissing at the ends of her fingertips. “Samuel would have cared.”

The other Ningyo’s circled her as Maija husked, “Now, you die.”

I dropped the Threads of Night. “Don’t make me spank you.”

Maija yelped, “McCord!”

Meilori took a half-step back. “Samuel!”

“Do I know you?”

She looked as if I’d knifed her, and I regretted my joke. “For seven years, what got me around each corner was the hope of seeing you there waiting for me.”

She mewed like a kitten and rushed into my arms, her lips hungrily seeking mine. An electric connection completed deep inside me. The world made sense again.

I was home.

A trilling vibrated around us. Maija’s portal was opening.

I heard feet. The Ningyo’s were about to jump us.

“Padre, trust me. Say God’s name!”

Maija leapt forward. The rabbi bellowed.

His lips worked as if he shouted one word, but I heard the sentence he said two thousand years before as he burned before the Roman emperor.

“The parchment burns, but the words fly free!”

The sound flowed into nothing human --

as if Life had come to know itself by the simple act of hearing it.

It came from all directions. The lower notes rumbled as if from the depths of the earth. Higher vibrations trilled as if from the stars in heaven.

I was a human tuning fork, the marrow of my bones trembling. The vibrations cascaded around me and Meilori in a waterfall of sound.

Her jade eyes, first wild with fear, soon grew as deep as the love I felt for her and she for me. A sunburst exploded with us in its burning honey center.

For the first time in two hundred years, I felt warm. Meilori smiled, then kissed me.

The universe might be ending. I didn’t mind. In her arms, I was finally home.
***

COMING HOME_NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE

It is time for another Friday ROMANTIC CHALLENGE given by the always fascinating Francine Howarth and Denise Covey.

Today's theme is COMING HOME.

My 400 word entry is from the sequel to my CREOLE KNIGHTS : NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE (in the process of being written.)

The cosmic conjunctions have aligned. The Nameless Ones strain at the unraveling barrier between them and our world.

After 7 years, Maija has released her sister, Meilori, from the bubble of frozen time in which she encased her in a trap of deceit.

Why?

To see her face when she tells Meilori that her beloved Samuel McCord lies dead by the tentacles of an exiled Nameless One he killed before dying.

The undead rabbi, Ben Teradion, is comforting the devastated Ningyo. He is Death’s measure to stop the invasion of The Nameless Ones.

Maija turns to mock the rabbi with the truth of his role, not realizing you simply cannot kill a man whom Death will not take. Shrouded in the Threads of Night, Samuel McCord, bleeding and battered, stands invisible beside her :



Maija laughed. “Death saved you for tonight, rabbi, to speak the name God gave Himself, that when uttered outside the Holy Temple would rend the very universe.”

Ben Teradion said, “No!”

Meilori whispered, “Death has come to revel in the end of life. For her, the death of the entire universe would be ecstasy.”

Ben Teradion husked, “But then --”

Maija nodded. “Nothing stands in the way of the Ningyo Empire to re-enter our home plane.”

The rabbi cried, “No! The Nameless Ones would return to our world!”

“Who cares?”

Meilori gestured, black energy hissing at the ends of her fingertips. “Samuel would have cared.”

The other Ningyo’s circled her as Maija husked, “Now, you die.”

I dropped the Threads of Night. “Don’t make me spank you.”

Maija yelped, “McCord!”

Meilori took a half-step back. “Samuel!”

“Do I know you?”

She looked as if I’d knifed her, and I regretted my joke. “For seven years, the hope of seeing you again got me up each morning.”

She mewed like a kitten and rushed into my arms, her lips hungrily seeking mine. An electric connection completed deep inside me. The world made sense again.

I was home.

A trilling vibrated around us. Maija’s portal was opening.

I heard feet. The Ningyo’s were about to jump us.

“Padre, trust me. Say God’s name!”

Maija leapt forward. The rabbi bellowed.

His lips worked as if he shouted one word, but I heard the sentence he said two thousand years before as he burned before the Roman emperor.

“The parchment burns, but the words fly free!”

The sound flowed into nothing human --

as if Life had come to know itself by the simple act of hearing it.

It came from all directions. The lower notes rumbled as if from the depths of the earth. Higher vibrations trilled as if from the stars in heaven.

I was a human tuning fork, the marrow of my bones trembling. The vibrations cascaded around me and Meilori in a waterfall of sound.

Her jade eyes, first wild with fear, soon grew as deep as the love I felt for her and she for me. A sunburst exploded with us in its burning honey center.

For the first time in two hundred years, I felt warm. Meilori smiled, then kissed me.

The universe might be ending. I didn’t mind. In her arms, I was finally home.
***

Friday Romantic Challenge_UP,UP, & AWAY_NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE

This Friday, Denise and Francine, have challenged us to do a romantic entry on the theme : UP, UP, AND AWAY :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My 400 word entry is from the sequel to CREOLE KNIGHTS, NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE.

My best friend, Sandra, loves books like THE BOURNE IDENTITY and THE DA VINCI CODE, so I made the middle of NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE be a meld of both books.

Samuel McCord kneels by the murdered body of a young prostitute and promises her spirit that he will find those responsible.

Fulfilling that promise takes him around the world :
Amsterdam, Jerusalem, and finally to the secret catacombs beneath the Vatican.

Each face he meets is but a mask, hiding deceit and death. McCord has discovered the Pope is but a puppet. But who is pulling the strings?

With the loss of his beloved wife, Sam is looking for a good death that takes out two monsters : himself and the master puppeteer.

He opens the door to the Pope's bedchambers to ask the man himself :

The bedchambers were everything a Renaissance concubine’s should be. But I was breaking into the bedroom of the current Pope.

The almost dressed woman sprawled lazily on the ornate bed. Her satin dress should have had a case of the bends, it dipped so low in the front.

It was slit clear to her slender waist. A lot of shapely leg showed. The flesh of her breasts was white velvet. Her eyes were blue diamonds. Her long hair a hot sunset.

“Please close the door,” she murmured.

“Bartolomeo Veneziano didn’t do you justice, Miss Borgia.”

“What a flatterer you are, Samuel. And do call me Lucrezia.”

She patted on the red velvet spread beside her. “Sit.”

Her voice was husky with desire. Tough. Since Meilori left me, I was a dry well. I walked to her bed and sat.

Lucrezia had insane eyes. They said she was a law onto herself, and she recognized no code but her own hungers. She studied me.

“Want to see my teeth?,” I asked.

She bubbled the laugh of a psychopath, “Oh, you already have justified the cost of poor Stanley’s life.”

“Was that his name?”

She laughed again. “My second real laugh in untold years."

I doubted that. She probably laughed at the pleas of each victim.

"My, you are a bargain. You didn’t know his name, nor the magnitude of the organization you were fighting?”

“No.”

Her lips twisted Cheshire style. “You didn’t have a clue?”

“Seldom do.”

Lucrezia's smile became full Cheshire. “So you killed a sociopath and took on a worldwide empire -- all for the sake of a raped whore?”

She sneered. “Raping a whore. Is that even a crime?”

“It is to me. She was fifteen years old.”

“She was dead while she lived.”

“She was human. Seeing as how I’m not any more, that means a lot to me.”

“What exactly are you?”

“A monster.”

Her fingers softly stroked the back of my gloved right hand. “You call yourself a monster?”

“Yes. And I’ll suffer the fate of all monsters.”

“Which is?”

“To die alone, unloved, and unmourned.”

Her face flinched as if I had hurt her somehow.

She shook her living waterfall of hair.

“Have you not pieced it together yet? I have studied you ever since you clashed with the Alumbrados in 1847. I have engineered all of this just to meet you.”

She eased closer. “We two are alone as no other on this earth.”

Lucrezia wet her parted lips. “We could share that aloneness.”
***

(Come sit down with me at Meilori's and hear Over the Rhine singing "Sharpest Blade.")

MYSTERIES OF NEW ORLEANS

There are many mysteries in the French Quarter.

There is even a street called Mystery but that is a 20 minute bus ride from there in an area called Mid-City.

If you are feeling brave and adventurous, you may choose to stay in the French Quarter's Mystery Hotel. 4 stars even. You know you want to.


The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carre {Old Square in French,} has long murmured a siren call to extreme personalities --

one such was the Sultan, whose famous ghost is said to haunt the halls of the 4 story house on 716 Dauphine Street. In the latter 1800's, he rented the house from the Le Prete family.

A dark day for everyone involved. The Sultan, a cruel and dangerous man, was not above kidnapping women off the streets, torturing them into submission, and then adding them to his harem.



One mysterious day, the Sultan met his fate in an ironic, cruel and hideous fashion. A neighbor strolling by his house stiffened in horror. She saw tiny rivers of blood trinkling from beneath the front door.



When the authorities broke down the door, they found a scene from a nightmare. Body parts and blood were everywhere. Every member of the household had been horribly murdered. Only the Sultan was missing. Where was he?



They discovered his body in the backyard in a shallow grave.

He had been buried alive.

The murderers were never discovered. It remains one of the city's most haunting, intriguing mysteries.



In NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE, the second novel to follow FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, Captain Samuel McCord finally solves the mystery, nearly at the cost of his own life.

But it is not too surprising that McCord solved the mystery.

His own jazz club is itself a mystery.

By day, the corner of Royal and St. Peter houses the Royal Cafe. At dusk, the corner transforms into Royal and Rue La Mort.

And the haunted MEILORI'S beckons to all who pass. The fortunate keep on passing. Those unwise or ignorant enter its glittering doors.

Some step out hours or days later. Many more do not. Does McCord possess the club, or is he possessed by it? Another unsolved mystery.



Despite my ghost stories, I hope all of you have a healing Sunday. The following song is the one most often requested by Samuel McCord when Diana Krall performs at Meilori's.

YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY JUST TO DIE

{My posts read easier at 125%}

I've had emails from some of my new visitors. They're unfamiliar with Samuel McCord. They ask : just who and what is he?

I thought I would answer in this post from the first chapter to NOCTURNE'S sequel : NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE. As we enter Samuel McCord's life, it is two months since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. He has emerged from his quarters in his jazz club, only just recovered from the injuries sustained in rescuing Death herself from a realm some call Hell :

CHAPTER ONE : IN THE HUSH OF A DYING CITY

Meilori's. Where death, life, and undeath sit at the same dark table. Still and all, it was my jazz club, and I loved her. Sort of tells you what kind of man I am, right?

Wrong.

Even I don't know what I am. All I know is that I can't die. Am I a revenant? Wash out your mouth and get that giddy look off your face. You really have no idea the horror that a true vampire is. Sadly, neither do they. Denial's not just a river in Egypt.

The blood of the entity called Death has mingled with mine. It was already an odd stew before then. Elu, my Apache blood-brother, was only half-Apache. His mother was the being the Apache called The Turquoise Woman and the ancient Greeks called Gaia. What did that make him, make me?

Screwed mostly.

Life isn't like Hollywood paints. Neither is undeath. There are no rules clearly written in some ancient, human-flesh bound book. Most children of the night don't know just what they are, what limits they truly have, and what secrets lay in their tainted blood. Life is never quite what you expect. Why should unlife be any different?

I stood in the shadows on the staircase leading down to the main floor of Meilori's. It twisted a bit so I was still hidden from those waiting for me at the front tables. I had maybe four beats of a living heart before they sensed me. I had known they were here from the moment they entered my club without my invitation. My club and I are linked like that. I drew in a deep breath that I didn't need to collect and center myself.

Somewhere in misty woods, lean wolves ran wild and free. Sitting on sandy shores, little children laughed at the lapping waves. Half a world away on mountain peaks, tall and unclimbed, the crisp winds sang their song of elusive eternity.

And standing here on these stairs, I was so weak from hardly healed injuries I actually trembled. I hurt all over. And the two leaders of the world's living dead waited for me at the bottom of these steps. Since they trusted each other about as much as I did them, they had brought their deadliest bodyguards.

I smiled like the wolf I was. Just another day for Captain Samuel McCord, eternal Texas Ranger. I had taken that oath some two hundred years ago. But I was still standing so it was still binding. Leastways, to my sense of honor it was. I suddenly pulled up straight and tall.

Down below, Diana Krall, Canada's queen of the piano, had changed from "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" to "You Call It Madness." The last tune was our signal for a deathtrap. I cocked my head and listened close. The keys were being hit by trembling fingers.

My friend was terrified.

I felt my face become stone. Let the rest of the world go to hell. But here in the French Quarter, in my club, no one preyed on innocents. No one.

I stepped down and around the corner as I smiled my death grin.

"Empress Theodora. President Abigail Adams. You've come a long way just to die."
******************

DO WE REALIZE WHAT WE CREATE?

Do we realize what we create when we write? When we create anything for that matter? Once a mother looked at her tiny infant and beamed with love at little Adolph Hitler.

The haunting fog horn.

Did its creators know the keening sound they were creating? A sound that vibrates within the marrow of our bones and trembles inside our lost dreams. Or did they want to give warning of something more, something we dare not ignore? The loss of our mortality? Or something beyond the length of hope and past the reach of hurting hearts?

I'm in the middle of my first draft to NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE, the sequel to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE. Some say it is unwise to spend so much time in writing a sequel to a book that may not even sell. In my mind's eye I can see Samuel McCord smile wryly and say, "Son, some of my best memories are of those times when I was unwise."

So I continue to write of Sam's adventures.

As we join Samuel, the Intelligence Agencies of the major world powers have all decreed his death. He is leading them a not-so-merry chase while trying to discover the why of the worldwide interest in his final death. It has led to his killing a woman he raised. Her last name changed often. But she always kept the first name Samuel had given her : Eve.
********************************************
Though I left her dead body in Amsterdam, Eve continued to haunt me. I seemed to see her eyes in all the hot shadows of this land that had sent her to kill me. A land that I helped give birth to.

Israel. The hottest spot in the part of the world where science says life began and ancient scrolls say it will end.

Me, I was a practical monster. Life begins when you start to see outside of yourself and ends when you stop.

Tel Aviv.

Considering its size and importance in the here and now, it was hard to believe that only a hundred years back, the place was just a sand dune. Actually, it had started out as a suburb of Jaffa, a city with a few shadows of its own -- like me.

After the Flood, it was said to have been founded by Japheth, Noah’s son. Old Jonah was swallowed off its coast when he turned his back on The Great Mystery, as the Sioux called Elohim.

In Greek mythology, Andromeda was chained to a rock in its port. The same port that King Solomon used to sail in all those cedars planks he used to build the Great Temple.

I smiled bitter. Now, it housed the Great Temple of Assassination and Spying, the Mossad. All in all, I figured the city had seen better days. Like me.

And like old Reuven Yatom, the present head of Metsada, the Special Operations Division. Fancy words for Murder Central.

I sat and watched him twitch like an old dog fast asleep. He was sprawled across his desk, his computer’s screensaver flashing erotic pictures of Angelina Jolie. Who would have figured him for a dirty old man?

Hell, where did he find the time?

His breathing was labored and wheezy. I watched the yellow hue of death tainting his life fires. How long did he have left? Five years? Two?

I sighed. I guess it would depend on how hard he pressed himself. If I didn't kill him first.

For a second I didn’t see the white, thinning hair. I saw him young and vital, his back pressed against mine as we fought ....

Hell, what was that war called now? I shook my head. I had fought too damn many of them to keep them all sorted right.

My face went hard. Somehow he had forced Eve to try to kill me. And I had done -- what had to have been done.

The chair I was in was backwards. I leaned a bit on its plush leather back, placing the barrel of my Colt right next to his temple. I pulled back the hammer with a gloved thumb. It made a loud, hollow click. He went stiff, his eyes snapping open.

I whispered the motto of the Mossad, “Be-tahbulot ta’aseh lekha milkhamah (By ways of deception, thou shalt make war).”

Only his rhuemy eyes moved, giving me a look that should have left welts. “What does it take to kill you, McCord?”

Any answer to that seemed downright stupid or suicidal so I said nothing. I had never gotten into trouble from something I hadn’t said.

His voice was thick with hate. “Eve is dead, is she not?”

“You should know. You killed her.”

“Do not blame me, monster!”

“I do. How the hell did you force her into trying to kill me, anyway?”

His face flushed, and his words came out slurred, “Eve had adopted the daughter of a murdered partner.”

He shrugged. “We merely suggested how dangerous life in Tel Aviv was for a thirteen year old.”

I nodded. “Figured as much. Now, I have to survive.”

He sneered, “So you can help that thirteen year old as well as you helped Eve?”

I pressed the barrel hard into his temple. “You know, you talk a lot of shit for a man with a Colt to his head.”

His wrinkled face paled. “How did you get that antique through the airport security?”

“Didn’t. I had this buried here a long time ago. Reckon I could outfit an army with all the Colts I have buried all over the world.”

His sneer returned. “If there was an army that would carry such antiquated weapons.”

“You need more than six bullets, you’re in the wrong line of business.”

Of course, this was a Walsh Navy Colt and fired twelve bullets. But with the Mossad it was never wise to show all your cards. Or all your bullets.

His lined face was a sagging map of the lost battles in his life. “What kind of monster, are you? You do not even mourn Eve.”

“I won’t mourn in front of you, bastard. And when I do, it will be in my own way.”

“You will die on this hunt, McCord. They are too many for even you.”

“Maybe. But the weak have one weapon.”

He sneered, “And what would that be?”

“The mistakes of those that figure they’re strong.”

His sneer clashed with his uncertain eyes. “They do not make mistakes.”

“They who? Who is so powerful that they can make the Mossad jump through hoops for them?”

His lips pressed together so hard, thin, and tight, they could’ve given a papercut. “Kill me, but I will not tell you.”

“Kill you? And spare you the suffering of these last years? Like hell.”

My gloved forefinger tapped the touch pad to his computer. “Besides, I bet anything you fell asleep after you talked to your master.”

The double-jointed pose of Angelina disappeared as Rueven yelped his outrage. I stared at the unveiled screen for a long moment. I turned to Reuven.

“Them? Them! I helped give birth to Israel, and you betray me to them?”

He didn’t answer but only swallowed once. Hard. His Adam’s apple seemed to have stuck in his throat. My fist slammed into his mouth. He flew out of his chair and hit the wall with a thud. He slid down it and stayed in a heap of clothes and blood. I got up slow.

“Said I wouldn't kill you. Didn’t say I wouldn't knock your teeth out.”

I sighed. Neither one of us seemed to feel any better after my hitting him. My face went rock-hard.

Next stop : the Vatican.
***********************************************
Here is a music video of Jerusalem by Herb Albert. Just imagine Samuel McCord in his all black western clothes, leading the assassins from a dozen different countries a grim chase. They are about to discover the harsh truth that when you hunt a tiger, sometimes the roles get reversed.

MYSTERIES OF NEW ORLEANS & A SHORT STORY CONTEST REQUEST

First, I have a polite request. I've entered a short story contest. If you don't mind, would you go here : http://www.radiantprose.com/entry/view/301. And if you like what you read, vote for my story. Now, back to the regularly scheduled post :

There are many mysteries in the French Quarter. There is even a street called Mystery but that is a 20 minute bus ride from there in an area called Mid-City. If you are feeling brave and adventurous, you may choose to stay in the French Quarter's Mystery Hotel. 4 stars even. You know you want to.

The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carre {Old Square in French,} has long murmured a siren call to extreme personalities -- one such was the Sultan, whose famous ghost is said to haunt the halls of the 4 story house on 716 Dauphine Street. In the latter 1800's, he rented the house from the Le Prete family. A dark day for everyone involved. The Sultan, a cruel and dangerous man, was not above kidnapping women off the streets, torturing them into submission, and then adding them to his harem.

One mysterious day, the Sultan met his fate in an ironic, cruel and hideous fashion. A neighbor strolling by his house stiffened in horror. She saw tiny rivers of blood trinkling from beneath the front door.

When the authorities broke down the door, they found a scene from a nightmare. Body parts and blood were everywhere. Every member of the household had been horribly murdered. Only the Sultan was missing. Where was he?

They discovered his body in the backyard in a shallow grave. He had been buried alive. The murderers were never discovered. It remains one of the city's most haunting, intriguing mysteries.

In NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE, the sequel to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, Captain Samuel McCord finally solves the mystery, nearly at the cost of his own life. But it is not too surprising that McCord solved the mystery.

His own jazz club is itself a mystery. By day, the corner of Royal and St. Peter houses the Royal Cafe. At dusk, the corner transforms into Royal and Rue La Mort. And the haunted MEILORI'S beckons to all who pass. The fortunate keep on passing. Those unwise or ignorant enter its glittering doors. Some step out hours or days later. Many more do not. Does McCord possess the club, or is he possessed by it? Another unsolved mystery.

And here is the beginning of a chapter in NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE entitled "The Deepest Thirst," in which Samuel solves the Sultan's murder and nearly dies in doing so.

I have been a lawman longer than two lifetimes of normal men. In that time I've bent more laws than I've upheld, made more widows than makes for a soft pillow, and caused more misery than any one man should be allowed to. In all the ways that count, I am a monster. Yet I keep on going. Let's hear it for plain old stubborness.

Through clawed woods and wild seas I've traveled, seeking the last ragged edges of the earth. Past shades of evils, down winding dark roads, and up jagged cliffs of ice I've gone. And all of it has only brought me back full circle, no wiser than when I started. Let's hear it for sheer thickheadedness.

Brooding and nursing my orange juice, I sat in the shadows. Meilori's, my French Quarter nightclub, was bustling despite Katrina and Rita. Relief workers needed relief, too. And the returning survivors needed someplace cool and dark to nurse their haunting memories and griefs. Me, too.

It was Samhain, summer's end. It had nearly marked New Orleans' end as well. But its people were a hardy lot.

The Celtic New Year began this nightfall. Someone with the name of McCord was supposed to know these things. So, of course, it had been told me by my Ningyo wife, Meilori. With a smirk of "you poor dense man" added for good measure.

It had stung at the time. Now, I would have given everything I owned to see that smirk again. I sighed at the memory of her leaving me.

It had been seven long years since I had last seen that exotic face, with or without the Mona Lisa smirk. A very long seven years. My old friend, Samuel Clemens, had Adam say over Eve's grave : Wheresoever she was, there was Eden. And so it had been with Meilori.

In ancient Welsh tradition, this evening was called The Three Spirit Night, when all kinds of beings could roam between realities. I smiled bitter. Maybe Meilori would choose tonight to return. I shook my head. For an old Texas Ranger, I was certainly pathetic. But my grief was something I couldn't seem to fight. It hit somewhere beyond reason and below the level of speech.

Love. I had searched for it for so long. With Meilori, it had come withing my grasp. And seven years ago, despite being right next to me, it had been lost to me forever.

Seven years. Tunes had gotten uglier, louder. The shouted whispers at my tables from man to woman had gotten filled with more profanities, but not more truth. I sighed. Their conversations were too contrived and too little aware of what really went on in the world.

But Katrina and Rita changed that. Now the eyes were shadowed by the recent brush with death, despair, and panic. People seemed frantic to shove as much passion into what had turned out to be a very unreliable life.

The real masks this Halloween were the attempts at laughter and high spirits, brittle denial of the end of all things that awaited them that final day which had proven to be much closer than they had once believed.

A cultured, not quite human, voice interrupted my brooding and spoke from the shadows to my left, "They say you help people."

I looked up. The business suit was black like mine, except instead of a western cut, it looked like those you see worn in India in the movies and nowhere else. The face made me go cold inside.

His eyes. Damn. His eyes. The slant to them was Ningyo.

Ningyo. The race from another plane of existence that had fled to ours. Most of them viewed humans as cattle, useful only for meals or amusement. I was either very close to my dream coming true. Or I was in deep shit.

The cold flatness of those eyes said deep shit.

I said, "Sometimes. And sometimes I hurt them."

{And so begins the mystery that will bring Samuel to the brink of madness and death.}

Despite my ghost stories, I hope all of you have a healing day today. And don't forget to vote for my short story if you're so inclined. The odds are against me I know. But I can hear Samuel chuckle, "That just makes the battle interesting, don't you know?"

The following song is the one most often requested by Samuel McCord when Diana Krall performs at Meilori's.

MYSTERIES OF NEW ORLEANS

There are many mysteries in the French Quarter. There is even a street called Mystery but that is a 20 minute bus ride from there in an area called Mid-City. If you are feeling brave and adventurous, you may choose to stay in the French Quarter's Mystery Hotel. 4 stars even. You know you want to.

The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carre {Old Square in French,} has long murmured a siren call to extreme personalities -- one such was the Sultan, whose famous ghost is said to haunt the halls of the 4 story house on 716 Dauphine Street. In the latter 1800's, he rented the house from the Le Prete family. A dark day for everyone involved. The Sultan, a cruel and dangerous man, was not above kidnapping women off the streets, torturing them into submission, and then adding them to his harem.

One mysterious day, the Sultan met his fate in an ironic, cruel and hideous fashion. A neighbor strolling by his house stiffened in horror. She saw tiny rivers of blood trinkling from beneath the front door.

When the authorities broke down the door, they found a scene from a nightmare. Body parts and blood were everywhere. Every member of the household had been horribly murdered. Only the Sultan was missing. Where was he?

They discovered his body in the backyard in a shallow grave. He had been buried alive. The murderers were never discovered. It remains one of the city's most haunting, intriguing mysteries.

In NEW ORLEANS ARABESQUE, the sequel to FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, Captain Samuel McCord finally solves the mystery, nearly at the cost of his own life. But it is not too surprising that McCord solved the mystery.

His own jazz club is itself a mystery. By day, the corner of Royal and St. Peter houses the Royal Cafe. At dusk, the corner transforms into Royal and Rue La Mort. And the haunted MEILORI'S beckons to all who pass. The fortunate keep on passing. Those unwise or ignorant enter its glittering doors. Some step out hours or days later. Many more do not. Does McCord possess the club, or is he possessed by it? Another unsolved mystery.

Despite my ghost stories, I hope all of you have a healing Sunday. The following song is the one most often requested by Samuel McCord when Diana Krall performs at Meilori's.