Mr. Right Now, page 14
When I landed at Kansas City International Airport, as soon as I walked through the gate, my friends rushed up and embraced me, murmuring condolences.
“Is Jake coming?” Cat asked.
I nodded. He’d told me that he was changing flights to Kansas City. “He’ll be here in a couple of hours. I’ve got to see Grandma. Please take me to her.”
Danni nodded. “The police want us to take you to the morgue to identify her body and sign the autopsy releases.”
“Why does she need an autopsy? She was an old woman.”
Cat and Danni looked at each other uncomfortably. The pause grew too long. “She was murdered,” Danni said.
I pressed my fist to my mouth to keep from crying out and nobody said anything else as we made our way to the car. I was almost blind from the tears streaming from my eyes. I couldn’t take this, I couldn’t. It hurt too much.
They wanted me to view my grandmother through windows or with cameras, but I insisted on seeing her.
They made us wait in a little white room with cinderblock walls and cheap linoleum. I stared at the clock. It was almost three A.M., a surreal hour when all but the most staunch partyers and nightshift workers slept. I shivered, although I knew the room was close and hot.
“Ms. Jones,” a man said. We all started to follow him, and he raised his hand. “They need to wait here for you,” he said. I followed him to a cool place where the foul odors were covered with harsh disinfectant.
He moved to a black shape on the table and started to unzip it. It only hit me then that this was Grandma, in a black plastic bag in a cold, ugly room. I shook harder, feeling the vibration through my entire body. He exposed Grandma’s face, her dear face. I touched her cheek one last time and gave a cry at the cool, alien texture. This wasn’t Grandma. A disembodied voice said, “Who do you identify this person as?”
I stared at her one more time, a lump filling my throat to bursting. “Lucinda Jean Jones,” I said. “My grandmother, Lucinda Jean Jones.”
There were two people, one on either side of me as they escorted me out of the room. They needn’t have bothered because Grandma taught me well how to carry myself under strain. You’re a lady, Luby. Remember that and it’ll get you through all sorts of mess.
They took me to a man who helped me into a chair beside his desk. “Do you have any other relatives?” he asked.
“My mother is mentally ill. How—how did she die?”
“She was stabbed twenty-seven times,” the man said. I heard nothing else after that.
Danni and Cat got me home and let me into my darkened apartment. Danni checked my messages and Cat undressed me as if I were a child and put me to bed. Then Jake was there, gathering me in his arms, rocking and rocking me while I sobbed against his throat.
I woke up in my own bed, tangled in Jake’s arms. Warm happiness thrummed through me until I remembered. Grandma was dead, gone forever. Icy grief worked its way up to my throat and a sob escaped.
He caught my mouth in a perfect kiss, tender and full of shared sorrow.
“Make love to me,” I whispered. “I need to feel alive.”
“Nobody ever dies, love. We only change,” he said.
His hands started to play me as if I were an instrument, his lips moving over my skin. I licked his neck, tasting honey and smoke, the fragrant deliciousness that was Jake. His fingers moved into my cream-filled cleft, scissoring my clit. I spread my legs and moaned as hot, wet pleasure welled through me. For these moments I could forget. I needed him inside me. I needed to feel the life of him.
I moved over him and reached for his hard penis and covered it with my own juices, rotating my pussy lips over its plumlike head. I felt him tremble.
I impaled myself on his blood-filled shaft, shuddering with the pleasure.
I moved in rhythm with the beat of my heart, frantic and fast, his thick dick stroking the slick walls of my pussy like a piston. I leaned down over him and kissed his lips, not slowing the pumping of my hips. His fragrance filled my nostrils, my body was full of him.
He rolled me over in a quick movement, sinking his thick cock deep within me, stilling my hips. “Baby, I was going to spill. Damn, you make it hard to hold back.” I wriggled around him, contracting and releasing my pussy on his dick.
He moaned and pulled out almost to the tip.
“Give it, give it to me, give that dick to me.”
He obliged, plunging into my pussy hard and deep making me spasm with delight as he pulled out slow again.
My hips bucked to get filled up with that sweet dick again.
His teeth flashed in a wicked grin.
He worked it, moving his rock hard cock in and out with a grind on the downstroke on my clit.
My face was buried in his neck and he pumped hard, the ridges of his big dick head working my walls and beating against my cervix.
I was never more alive, I thought as the convulsions made me scream and jerk as the pleasure took me so hard the edges of my vision went black and pleasure so sharp it was etched in anguish as pussy pulsed and trembled around his dick.
With a roar he plunged in deep and shuddered, I felt his seed within me, full of life, roaring and mixing with every cell of my body.
My eyes closed in the wonder of it. It had been intense before, but this was incredible.
It was only then I realized that my mouth was full of the delicious taste of his blood.
I looked at Jake’s neck in horror. Blood trickled down from a sharp cut. I tested my incisors against my lower lip. They didn’t feel long or fanged, but they felt razor sharp.
A small smile played over Jake’s lips. “You are bound to me forever and you are truly one of us.”
“My grandmother was talking about snake people. Can you turn into a snake? Can I?” Talk about truly. I truly couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. Then it hit me what Jake had said. You are bound to me forever.
“What do you mean, bound?”
“We can discuss it later,” he said, his voice soothing. That meant he didn’t think I could take whatever bound meant on top of what happened to my grandmother. It must not be good. What Jake didn’t realize was that I could barely take breathing on top of what happened to Grandma. I couldn’t be pushed over the edge, because I fell over it right after that cop said those words to me over the phone, “I regret to inform you ...”
“We can discuss it now,” I said. “How am I changed?”
“You’re twenty-seven. It’s your time, a natural thing. The power is maturing, awakening and thrumming within you.”
“The blood thing, Jake.”
“We like the blood of our mates. It’s how we bond. We mingle our life forces, we mingle our blood. Maybe you can consider it another form of sex.”
Somehow I felt let down. “Is that all? No weird powers, no nightshift hours, no monotonous liquid diet?”
He grinned at me. “You’ll get some sort of power, if you haven’t already. I see it in your aura. Even if you didn’t, since you’re of the blood, you have the ability to learn to see and manipulate magical energies.”
“Of the blood?”
“You have the blood of the ancient ones running through your veins, as do I. You are witch-born.” My eyes widened. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know already or suspect, but the words witch-born chilled me.
He sighed. “I have something else to tell you. Remember when I asked you to drink my blood in the wine? I shouldn’t have done it. I should have discussed it with you first, but it was as if I was driven. I had to take you.”
“What are you talking about, Jake? Please, please get to the point.”
“You’re my bond-mate. It’s like a wife. We’re bonded forever. Um, that means permanently. Breaking the bond is a bit of an ordeal.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We can’t mate with anybody else. The magical bond won’t allow it.”
My eyebrows shot up. “And how can this magical bond be broken?” I was crazy about the guy, and the idea of a fidelity bond pleased me down deep, but he had the nerve to do something like that without asking me first?
He flushed. I cocked my head. I’d never seen him change color in the face before.
“Generally, uh, normally it can only be broken, uh, if—”
“If what?”
“One of us dies or turns evil.”
“Evil?” I asked.
“There’s a polarity between good and evil. They repel. Bond-mates must both be relatively good or evil.”
“So opposites don’t attract in magic land. Who says what’s evil and what’s good? What would have happened if I was evil and you bonded with me?”
“The universe decides. If we weren’t both good, the bond wouldn’t take.”
“Humph. Isn’t it customary to ask first? What about the big, giant rock you’re supposed to present me? What happened to the over-priced ordeal of a wedding? What about my cake and my fucking wedding presents?”
He winced. “Don’t yell. We can do all that.”
“I never was into all that crap anyway; the point is why didn’t you ask like a normal person? What’s wrong with you?”
He flushed deeper and concentrated on the knuckles in his hands. “I knew I wasn’t going to let you go.”
I fell back on the pillows. “You’re not getting out of giving me a rock,” I said.
He whooped and scooped me close to his body. “You said yes!”
“Like you gave me a choice, Negro.”
He looked at me, astonished, and then cracked up laughing.
I didn’t mean to say Negro. It slipped out. The grin I was holding back broke over my face. Somehow Jake always hit me with what I needed at the right time. A binding promise, security and forever love at the darkest moment in my life.
My scalp prickled and I looked around, seeing nothing. But somewhere, somehow, I knew Grandma was pleased.
CHAPTER 20
... jealousy is cruel as the grave
—Song of Songs, 8:6
Jake and I pulled up in front of the mental health facility where Lily stayed. Jake helped me from the car. I didn’t spurn his arm because I felt that without his support, I’d fall over.
He’d taken over, meeting with the police, visiting the funeral home, making the funeral arrangements with Grandma’s pastor. I never leaned on a man before. It felt strange, but good.
Jake and I were going to the woman who gave birth to me, and I’d tell her about the death of her mother.
Lily lay in bed watching television. I stepped toward her and froze. For the first time in my memory, Lily looked directly at me.
Before I could open my mouth, she said, “She’s gone.”
I sat in the torn, vinyl chair next to the door. It smelled faintly of urine and I shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, Grandmother passed away. And I need to tell you that she was—” I took a deep breath. “Murdered.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open. “You killed her instead of me?” Her fingers twined and intertwined with each other in a complex pattern. “It made sense for you to kill her. She was older, lived her life. They said you’d only kill one of us. I thought it would be me, knew it would be me. You killed her instead.” Her lips spread in an awful rictus. “Thank you,” she said.
“I didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “Especially not Grandma.” I wished that Lily had died in her stead. If it had been within my power, I would have done it without hesitation.
“But you did. If it weren’t for you and your stud here, she’d still be alive. It’s almost as if you wielded the knife and slammed it through your precious grandmother’s flesh. Twenty-seven times, twenty-seven times.”
I stood, sickened. “Let’s get out of here, Jake.”
He studied my mother intently, his eyes gleaming like shards of green glass.
Her voice lowered, roughened as if there was a snake lodged in her throat. “I escaped him, but I didn’t escape his curse. He told me that my child would be the instrument of death, that it be the cause of the matriarch to die in agony and a wash of blood. All these years I thought it would be me.” She spread her lips again. “Mama wouldn’t let me kill you. Your grandma protected you. I tried plenty of times. Now, I bet Mama wishes she’d let me.”
“You sick bitch,” I said. I’d always thought people who cursed their parents were lower than low, but that woman on the bed wasn’t my mother. I refused to acknowledge the connection.
“You dare!” My mother’s pupils constricted, becoming yellow snakelike slits. I scrambled back, almost falling to the floor.
Jake caught me in his arms.
Her impossible snake’s eyes glared at me. The hairs rose on my arms.
“Let’s go,” Jake said quietly. He pulled me from the room. “She has demons.”
He rushed me into the clean, sweet air. I didn’t want to ever see that woman again. But a sense of duty still stirred within me. She was all the family I had left. “What do you mean, she has demons?” I asked.
“She’s possessed.”
“Shouldn’t we send a priest to do an exorcism or something?”
He gave a tight shake of his head. “For her, it wouldn’t help. You see, she wants to be possessed. The demons are her family, her children, and her lovers. She would resist fiercely.”
He drove to my grandma’s house silently, his jaw tight. I realized that I didn’t care about Lily. She’d chosen her demons over me, and that was the way it had been for a long time. Grandma was my real mother, the woman who raised and loved me.
She’d been killed in the alley behind our house, when she took out the trash. I should have been there, I screamed in my head. Twenty-seven times, oh God, twenty-seven times.
The police had no idea who did it, no murder weapon and no motive.
When he pulled up at the house, it looked as if its spirit also fled. I couldn’t bear to see it that way. I couldn’t bear to go in either. “Let’s drive past,” I said to Jake.
“Wait in the car. I need to go in.” I handed him the keys.
I leaned back on the leather seat. He’d left the car running and the AC on. I locked the doors after he’d left. Twenty-seven times. Grandma, how did you bear the pain?
After a while, Jake came out looking grim. “I think I know who killed your grandmother,” he said.
I waited.
“I believe Alyssa did it,” he said.
“Why would Alyssa kill my grandma?” I asked, stunned.
“There are psychic traces of her all around. She had to do it herself. A demon couldn’t stab a human directly.”
“One threw that potion readily enough.”
“The potion was magic, not entirely of this plane.”
Something flared within me, something hot and ugly, something that wanted to kill. “Where is Alyssa?” I asked through stiff lips.
“I’ll contact my family as soon as we get home. We’ll stop her.” He looked at me. “I never believed she could do anything like this. The attack on you was motivated by bitter jealousy, but what she did to an innocent woman for no reason but vengefulness—it was pure evil. If I’d known she was capable of—”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. I meant it. Alyssa killed Grandma all by herself.
Grandma’s funeral was overflowing with people. Her church, her book club, her garden club. I never knew Grandma had so many friends. I’d filled the chapel with white lilies, Grandma’s favorite flower.
Grandmother’s pastor went to pick up Lily and came back crestfallen, saying she refused to come. He had that indignant air of the well-cussed out. Who knows what Lily’s demons had done to him?
Grandma had left instructions for her funeral. She’d wanted it simple. She’d even picked out the casket, one of the least expensive models. She wanted me to carry her Bible to the funeral and she wanted to have the first two books of the Song of Solomon read.
“An unusual choice,” the pastor had said.
There’s nothing sinful, about passion, child. If you find it, consider yourself blessed and keep the flame alive for as long as you can.
“It’s her choice,” I replied. He said nothing else.
She didn’t want eulogies or fuss. She wanted prayers, silent ones from the heart. That was all. I did one thing for her that she hadn’t asked. She didn’t ask for white lilies, her favorite, or any flower, but I was happy I could do this small last thing for her. The lilies’ fragrance was sweet and heady.
The casket was closed. I felt no need to have it open for people to gawk at the meaningless flesh that housed Grandma. Her spirit was long gone.
The pastor was reading the beautiful cadence of the Song of Songs. The words flowed over me and I opened Grandma’s Bible to follow along. There was a paper tucked in between the pages, parchment thin and filled with Grandma’s flowing handwriting.
I smoothed the letter open.
My dearest child,
I wish there was some way to make this easier for you. We are only given an allotted time here on earth, and when that time is up, the saddest thing is leaving the ones we love behind—for a short while.
Your mother is lost and has been for a number of years. I only wish I could have stayed longer to watch over you.
Sometimes we’re tested, but the way out always lies down the right road of faith, forgiveness, humility and most of all love.
Trust in the power of love, for it is stronger than death, stronger than anything.
Never forget that, and you’ll always be in the light, instead of the darkness, like your poor mother. You have all my love forever.
May the Christ keep and protect you,
Your grandmother,
Lucinda
Tears dripped off my nose and I fumbled in my purse for a tissue. Jake handed me one and I took it gratefully.
Grandma knew she was going to die and accepted it. She told me to forgive, but right now it was beyond me.
