Faith Hunter: Have Stakes Will Travel

As before, the bell chimes shivered through the empty house, leaving the air expectant. As the last tone faded, the water between my knees brightened, and so did the floor of the parlor. Twin, green, luminous feathers of light rose, twining and twisting like smoke, up to the ceiling overhead, pooling against the high corners, spreading toward the center of the room.

The old-fashioned electric ceiling light appeared, adding light to the falling dark, revealing the furnishings of the past: the blood-rose walls, the velvet upholstered couch and wheeled tea tray, the wing chairs and card table. The man’s squeaky song came from the old-fashioned phonograph, hollow and cheery. The small, auburn haired woman once again sat in the wing chair, the basket of yarn at her feet. I heard Brax take a slow, shocked breath.

The woman looked up, turned. Her eyes widened, mouth opened. The small form fell upon her, the pop of vampiric speed making Brax flinch. The child attacked, grabbing up the woman. She screamed. His fangs latched on and her scream stopped, to be replaced by a single strong sucking sound.

The woman lifted her knitting needles. She stabbed the child.

He screamed, the horrible note of true death.

The second pop sounded and the taller, adult vampire appeared. He pulled the woman and child apart. Blood pumped scarlet from her throat, all over her white gown and out into the room. The child dangled, the wooden knitting needles in his body.

The woman’s blood pumped over the man’s chest and the Kerr Symballophone. The child’s blood splattered it again. The man roared the single word, “ No !” vamping out and falling to the floor beneath the two, cradling the woman, pulling the stakes from the child. He tore his own wrist and dribbled his blood into the child’s mouth, scooping the woman’s blood in as well. Letting the woman die, the woman he might have saved. Everything was just like the last time I had seen it.

The vampire screamed, his fangs nearly two inches long, lifting to the light. His bellow was powerful. And as he sat there, the two bodies embraced on his lap, he looked right at me. He saw Jane behind me. Saw the cop, and Evan.

Evan rang the bell again, one strong tone for each word of freedom and free , as I released my intent and purpose, saying, “Freedom be and freedom bought, freedom from the dead past sought. Free the house and end this spell. Free the dead to heaven and hell.”

As I spoke, the vampire raced at us. With each tone, he aged and shrank, his tissues draining and flesh caving in. His bloody eyes going feral, rabid, insane. He roared again, this time for blood.

The green light exploded out, the candles snuffed all at once. Dark fell on us. I was yanked back, Jane’s hands shockingly like steel, bruising me. I was shoved into Evan’s chest so hard my breath whuffed out of me. I heard the battle around me as Evan shuffled me out of the house into the night.

But I saw, in the moonlight through the open door, Jane Yellowrock, as she raced toward the vampire, her body moving far faster than human, her eyes glowing golden, her face frozen in a rictus of action, lips pulled back, showing her teeth. And the cop, staking the vampire, but clearly too low, a belly stab. Instantly Jane staked the vampire, one hard thrust in the heart. Brax mirrored her move stabbing up with the knife, roaring with a battle scream. And then I was outside. In the cool night air, the breeze raising gooseflesh on my arms. And silence descended on the dark.

The sounds of battle had gone on for only seconds, but it seemed much longer. The scream of vampire, the grunts of the people, the sound of blows hitting the night. Into the silence, I heard Jane say, “Not bad. You got your first vamp kill. But you have to take the vampires’ heads. Both of them.” And Brax cussed, long and hard, while Jane laughed.

Evan wrapped me in his arms, murmuring to me, “It’s okay. It’s done. It’s okay now, sweetheart.” And I could smell the stink of bowels on the air from the witch who had died so long ago, and only moments in the past.

Jane had told me about her inner beast, and I hadn’t understood, not at all. I was pretty sure I had seen it tonight, however, in the golden glow of her eyes, in the way her lips pulled back like an attacking cat’s. In the pure violence of her body flowing forward, supple and svelte and… and violence personified.

I had thought of her as human, as softer than she really was. While Jane Yellowrock had a soft side—the side I saw when she was with Angie Baby, or when she went into “protect mode” around the abused, or when she prayed—she was not human. And she was anything but soft.

I buried my head in Evan’s chest and closed my eyes, blocking out that image of Jane—warrior Jane—attacking. Moments later, she came out of the house and down the stairs, her eyes on me, evaluating, questioning, conjecturing. As if she could smell my new awareness of her on the air. For all I knew, she could.

Behind her, Brax called out to Evan to come help him. He didn’t say why, but my husband patted my arms and left me. The night air was cool on my flesh where he had held me, and I shivered.

Jane lilted up her lips at my shiver, the smile cynical and defensive. “I’m not a big bad ugly,” she said, her voice stiff. “I won’t hurt you. And I’d never hurt your daughter.”

I realized I had hurt her though I had no idea how. “What?” I asked, perplexed. And then it occurred to me that tonight she had allowed me to see a part of her kept hidden until now. I had to wonder if anyone had ever seen her in killing mode. Well, anyone who was still alive. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered again, thinking about warrior-Jane near Angie. She was right. Jane would never hurt my daughter. And Angelina would never be safer than when she was with Jane Yellowrock. “You’re an idiot,” I said, putting all the asperity I could into my voice. “I’m not scared of you. I’m cold .”

Jane blinked, opened her mouth, and closed it, thinking. “You’re not scared of me?”

I shook my head no.

Jane walked away a few paces and came back with her jacket which she wrapped around my shoulders. “Thanks,” she said, which I figured was my line, but I understood what she meant.

“You are welcome,” I said. And she smiled at me, a real smile, soft and full and lovely.

The police investigation lasted for three weeks, with a complementary media hue and cry over the “unexplained appearance of people from seventy years in the past, all looking unchanged, yet all freshly killed,” and the “witch paraphernalia found at the scene.” The media attention went on until something more interesting happened and the news vans disappeared.

And, of course, even when the crime scene tape came down, I still didn’t get paid. The lawyer didn’t answer or return my calls. The morning my old fridge finally wore out, shutting off with a small cough of what sounded like apology, Jane called Brax. I didn’t want her to, but Jane had a mind of her own and pretty much did what she wanted.

A wire transfer for the full amount appeared in my banking account that afternoon, only minutes after the newly transplanted local cop paid a visit to the lawyer, off the record, and suggested that he pay his bill. Evan and Jane delivered my spanking new fridge that evening, just in time to save my frozen food.

I fixed steaks that night, and the four of us—Jane, Evan, Angelina, and I—sat on the back porch, under the moonlight eating and drinking and talking like old friends. It was a perfect night. Or almost. Until Angelina turned to me and said, “Mama. You gonna have a baby!”

In the shocked silence, Jane leaned in too and sniffed me, delicately, like a kitten exploring the world. “Huh. Angie Baby’s right. And ten bucks says it’s a boy.”