Vicious Circle c-1 Page 6

  I didn’t touch the crystal frame; the hinge on the back was loose. Only the fact that it sat perfectly balanced on a doily kept it from sliding down.

  He was Egyptian—his skin was dark, his hair black, and his eyes bright brown. Handsome features like high cheekbones and a well-formed mouth over a dimpled chin gave him an air of refined masculinity. The arched brows made him mysterious, a bit dangerous. His expression here was serious, but I’d always imagined that if he smiled, it would come easily to him, and that his teeth would be straight and glossy white.

  Around his neck he wore an amulet of Anubis, jackal-headed god of ancient Egyptian afterlife. Seeing it had been what stopped me from clicking off the light. Though his picture sat on this table for as long as I’d lived here—the dust on it was proof—I didn’t look at it every day. I’d forgotten about his amulet, hadn’t put together my totem jackal and my father.

  Amenemhab had said of the flowers, “…they are what their roots have made them. And they can be nothing else.” I’d laughed off the family tree issue, thinking only of Nana and my mother. I hadn’t considered the unknown other side of my family.

  Now that I knew the killer was a vampire, though, everything had changed. I jerked the little string on the lamp and pulled the quilts up tight around my neck, peering at the dark through the skylights overhead. “Instrument of justice” or not, I wouldn’t even begin to consider going after a vampire.

  Chapter 7

  Hello?”

  I could barely hear Vivian’s voice over the sobbing and screaming in the background. Though muffled as if her hand was covering the mouthpiece of the phone, Vivian’s exasperated scream—“Just shut up!”—came through anyway.

  I hadn’t even gone downstairs yet; I was sitting on the end of my bed in the glow of an up-slanting sunbeam, watching dust float in the air. My ears itched from having cotton in them all night. Not that I’d slept much. The thick wads had successfully blocked out Poopsie’s whining, but my own thoughts couldn’t be stopped. Still, I had a speech ready for Vivian. A good one.

  The sobbing grew more distant, and I heard a door slam. “Hello?” Vivian said again, trying to sound calm and collected.

  “Vivian? It’s Persephone.”

  “What do you want?”

  I switched sides with the phone to rub the other ear. The background sobbing had caught me off guard, but then I guessed its source. “Is that Beverley?”

  “Of course it’s Beverley…the little tyrant.”

  Tyrant? I couldn’t keep the anger from creeping into my voice: “Is something wrong?”

  “No. What do you want, Miss Alcmedi? Please keep it quick. Thanks to Beverley, I’m already late for work.”

  Beverley’s screaming rose again, and various muffled sounds followed. Initially, I’d thought that Beverley had run off and slammed a door behind her, but now I realized Vivian had left Beverley and was fighting to keep the door shut to separate herself from the little girl who was repeating, “I want my mom” in a desperate chant.

  It made my heart ache. My prepared speech faded away. “Do you need some help?” I asked.

  “I can’t hear you, Miss Alcmedi, but don’t worry, your money will be ready at four.” She hung up.

  The phone was still in my hand when Nana ambled into my sunny room.

  “Aren’t you fixing breakfast?” I heard the lighter click as she lit a cigarette.

  Numbly, I said, “No.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the blank digital display of the phone. The words still seemed to echo dully: “I want my mom, I want my mom…”

  I remembered feeling that wretched and misplaced. I remembered running through a cornfield, blasting through stalks and spiderwebs and crying so hard I couldn’t see. I’d collapsed when I had fallen into a muddy ditch between fields and sobbed myself to sleep. My first real experience with the Goddess had been in that cornfield.

  “Persephone?” Nana prompted.

  “There’s cornflakes. Or toaster waffles.”

  Poopsie bounded in and pulled up short, somehow managing to skid despite the carpet. He thumped down on his backside. Everything in the upstairs of my house shook. The crystal frame beside my bed clunked down on its back, the loose hinge having given way despite the doily.

  I twisted to right it and paused, looking again at my father, at his Anubis amulet. I studied the sport coat he wore, searching for telltale signs of a pistol underneath. I tried to, but couldn’t, detect where a shoulder holster might be hidden.

  “Fine.” Nana walked away. “Hope you don’t expect me to eat boxed food every morning. Even the nursing home fixed real food.”

  Poopsie sat where he’d landed, panting. “You have to be more careful if you’re going to stay here,” I said. He gave a little bark and was up bounding after Nana and, from the sound of it, crowding past her on the stairs.

  I grabbed last year’s phone book from the low drawer on the bedside table; I kept the newer book on my desk downstairs by the kitchen phone. Flipping through the yellow pages’ “Churches & Places of Worship” section, I found what I was looking for in a sizeable, poorly designed ad: The Church of God Almighty, Reverend Samson D. Kline, Pastor.

  That poor little girl deserved justice. “For Beverley,” I whispered as I dialed.

  * * *

  “They wanted it and they got it. Damn them all!”

  In a Hooters booth, sitting across from Samson D. Kline, I couldn’t help staring at him. The fundamentalist preacher and local televangelist wore a light blue polyester suit with a white shirt. A Donald Trump comb-over sat like a thin gray dollop atop his head. Drooping jowls wiggled on either side of a bulging double chin from which his boring black tie descended. His piggish dark eyes gave him the look of someone constantly attempting to cry, but never succeeding.

  “Them homosexuals”—he pronounced it hom-o-sectshuls in precise syllables inflected with a deep-rooted southern drawl—“they wanted equality. Tolerance. Just one homo with clout in Hollywood, and the right words licked into the right ears, and everyone obeyed, eagerly climbin’ on the butt-fuckin’ bandwagon. That modern Babylon made sitcoms about them. Humanized them, as if their practices weren’t profane abominations of God’s holy plan! They taught all the boobs watching the boob tube to react with pity and understanding for these destroyers of the Western world.”

  Since we were sitting in Hooters, the word “boob” attracted more attention than it would have if we’d been elsewhere. Men at other tables were starting to stare at him—it took something as downright bizarre as Reverend Kline to get men to look at anything but the waitresses in this place.

  “Made daytime talk show hosts of them to make sure that American housewives would be converted to this new tolerance—” His voice started to rise again.

  “Mis-ter Kline.” I cut him off with a sharp tone. “This is Hooters.” I gestured around the restaurant. “When you suggested that we meet here, I assumed you knew—”

  “You know what they say about assuming.”

  “—I assumed you knew it was a restaurant, but obviously you don’t, so let me clarify: that side of the table is not a pulpit, and I didn’t ask for an interview in order to be converted.” I thought, but didn’t add, you hypocritical bastard.

  “But that’s my new campaign. Isn’t that what this interview’s all about?”

  I smiled. “I apologize if you assumed it was.”

  My round-bellied guest let out a Scotch-laced sigh, and his eyes followed a waitress carrying a tray across the room. “You want to hear about how I lost my network broadcast, don’t you?” His expression became pained. “About the video. Won’t you people ever stop? It was research! I swear! I wanted to understand them perverts, in order to convert them!” His pasty skin started to get blotchy as the passion of his words grew. He thumped the table. “I was used, made a spectacle of…became part of that whole humanizing scheme. The devil’s revenge is cruel against those who do the good work.” He sucked the last of the Scotch off the
melting ice cubes in his glass. “What kind of story are you writing?”

  It took me a heartbeat to recover from the well-practiced tirade and respond to his question. “I’m not writing a story.”

  “You said you was a journalist and wanted to ask me some questions.” It came out quest-yuns.

  “I am a journalist, but this is not an interview.”

  He squinted. “Then what do you want?”

  I wanted answers, so I had to put up with his bigoted crap to some extent. For Beverley’s sake, I told myself again. If I was going after a vampire, I had to know everything I could, gain every advantage I could.

  I took a hundred-dollar bill from the little purse on my lap. If not for the promise of Vivian’s cash coming this afternoon, this would have really hurt my budget—especially after providing for all of Poopsie’s canine needs. Nonchalantly, I laid it on the table. It was crisp and flat, a new bill. I pushed it toward him, but kept my finger on my end of it.

  His eyes lit up, then darkened. On the phone I’d only offered him a fifty-dollar “donation.” Seeing the Benjamin, he knew this was going to be bad. “Tell me about…Goliath.”

  One eye squinted up suspiciously, but his blotched skin paled. “You’re a devil, young lady.” His mouth twitched. “And you offer too little for my soul.”

  “Mr. Kline—”

  He leaned forward and snatched the bill away, crumpling it into his chubby fist. His face pinched, and his eyes squeezed shut. He took a deep breath and released the Scotch fumes in my direction again. But this time the smell had a hint of antiseptic to it, like that of a hospital about to burst into flames.

  “The shrink my parents took me to, years after the abduction, did a regression on me. Menessos, that…that…bastard was there. As he is now. Unchanged. Fucking vampire. Worse than the perverts, the undead! And any of them in power of others, so much worse….” His voice went all little-boy scared; then he recovered. “He lured my brother away with false promises. Lured him right out the window. His words were like candy to Goliath.” His pious look faltered; he snorted and sat back.

  Menessos? Who was Menessos? “What did he say?”

  “He promised to teach my brother, tutor him. To make him powerful and…immortal.” His eyes darted up; his expression instantly became an angry stare. “You’d love to be one of those freaks, wouldn’t you? That’s what this is about.”

  “No, I wouldn’t and no, it isn’t. Absolutely not.” Of course I thought people who watched his show and followed his bizarre beliefs were almost as freakish as vampires. Most of his followers would have done better with regular doses of lithium than regular doses of him.

  “The gleam in your eyes says different.” He paused. “You’re walking into the garden, little girl, with your belly just rumblin’ for an apple.”

  “My beliefs happen to be other than your own, but I’ve always thought the Garden of Eden story would have been much better if Eve wasn’t portrayed as such a mindless character manipulated by suggestion. I mean, if she were a little bolder, more resourceful and confident, why, she and Adam might’ve had snake for dinner instead.”

  He stared at me, seemingly confused. I’d spoken just fast enough to keep him from interrupting. Perhaps he’d never entertained the thought that Eve could have been bold. He said, “So you don’t want to become a vampire?”

  “No. My purpose is other than that, Mr. Kline. I assure you.”

  “Oh.” He drew out the sound like a discovery. He tucked the wadded hundred-dollar bill into the pocket of his unironed shirt. “Revenge, then, is it?” His face went devoid of emotion. “I know what the creature that was once my brother does for him.”

  He assessed my expression carefully, then continued with neither bombast nor drawl, “Take my advice: drop it. Whatever he did, let it go and get on with your life and be happy you’ve still got it. Because I guarantee you, if the genius bastard who once was my brother has reason to think you’re of interest in any way, then you’re already being watched. There’ll be no surprising him. If you act against him, he’ll be ready, and he’ll retaliate. And if Menessos gets involved…he will destroy you, destroy your spirit, and leave you wishing Goliath had killed you.” Miserably, he added, “Who do you think arranged and leaked the video of me? A human servant set me up from the start. With all my good intentions for the soul of my brother, with all the power of my God backing me, if I didn’t have the strength of mind and character to defeat Menessos, you’re a fool if you think you can, missy.”

  When he pushed his chair back and stood, I knew I was getting the check for his drink. At least his loud tirade had kept the waitresses at bay long enough to keep us from having ordered any food. “I suggest you keep your head down,” he said, “and forget whatever it is you think you know. Goliath will only take so much nosing around. Take that bit of advice seriously.” He pointed his sausage-like finger at me. “It’ll keep you from scrounging through McDonald’s Dumpsters to soothe your hungers.”

  Chapter 8

  Nana stood in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She had been there for not quite a minute. She’d shifted her weight and sighed heavily four times already. At my dining room desk, I sat typing out my recent activities and thoughts on my laptop. Writing it all down helped me keep it straight in my head, and suddenly there were so many threads in my life that I needed a visual. This kind of exercise had blossomed into the column that now provided my income.

  Pointedly, Nana cleared her throat, but I didn’t stop typing.

  “Aren’t you going to cook any dinner?” she finally said.

  I glanced up from my computer screen and, even though I didn’t intend to stop typing, I couldn’t help it. Nana wore a white sweatshirt and white sweatpants. Her irritated, hands-on-hips pose accentuated her snowman body shape. Her white beehive was still ruffled in the back from an afternoon nap she insisted was only a few minutes of resting her eyes. I knew better—her snoring had greeted me when I arrived home from meeting Mr. Kline. It was a struggle not to let my amusement show.

  “Well?”

  “Not today.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Nope.” I paused to rethink how to spell “discipline.” Nana always said it dis-li-pline. A lifetime of hearing that pronunciation made me have to stop and think when I had to write that particular word; otherwise I’d put an extra l in it.

  “Well, for your information, it’s after six. It’s dinnertime.”

  “So?” A smile slipped onto my face. For all the hang-ups my childhood had provided, teasing her equaled the mildest retribution.

  “So? I’m hungry! Poopsie’s hungry.” He loped in when she said his name. “I’m not eating out of a box again.”

  “Chubby’s dog food is in the garage. And don’t you dare start feeding him table food!”

  “His name is Poopsie,” she said defiantly, patting his head.

  I saved my document, closed the laptop, and got up. “All right. I’ll feed him. But he’s going to be too big to be called ‘Poopsie.’” He followed me eagerly into the garage and across the cracked cement floor to his metal crate. I scooped his puppy chow into the bowl and placed it deep inside the cage, just like the puppy book said to do. “There you go.”

  He didn’t move from his spot by the garage door.

  “Go on. Your dinner’s in there.”

  He sat and gave a whine.

  “Okay. I’ll make her get you a cooler name.”

  Another whine.

  “And it won’t be Chubby.”

  He barked and leapt into the cage and started to eat just as a motorcycle roared up my driveway, throwing gravel. I stepped back to the kitchen in time to see Nana slam the cupboard door in disgust and shuffle out. I announced, “Dinner’s here.”

  “Delivery?” she asked, turning.

  “Yup. You should smooth your hair down in the back.”

  Her hands shot up self-consciously. “Who delivers out here,” she grumbl
ed, heading for the living room as she spoke, “besides that grumpy paperboy who couldn’t hit a driveway if it were the size of Texas?”

  “That paperboy isn’t tossing out papers while riding a bicycle, Nana. This is the country, not the suburbia you’re accustomed to. Out here, paperboys are grown-ups driving cars, and usually they’re going about sixty. If the paper’s on the property at all, he didn’t miss.”

  From the living room, she’d have a good view of our guest coming in. Wanting to avoid her having a conniption, I started my warning as I jogged down the hall to the door. “His name’s Johnny.”

  “The paperboy?”

  “No, Nana. The man bringing dinner. Now Nana, don’t freak. He’s—”

  Nana was already peering out the window. “By the lunar crone’s eyes, would you look at that!”

  “Nana—”

  “I thought they quit making handsome deliverymen back in the sixties!”

  I stopped. She thought Johnny was handsome? Her inflection hadn’t been sarcastic; her words hadn’t been confirmation of a suspicion, but a surprised observation. His tattoos made him seem disturbingly scary to me. I stared at her as she stood at the window with the curtains parted, smiling out at the porch. Johnny’s boots thumped across the wooden boards. He was knocking before I could open the front door.

  “Hello, Red.” Johnny smiled, his low voice warm and rich. His tone said so much more than “hello.” Behind him, the golden leaves rained down from my pair of oaks. Wind whipped over the porch and through the screen to chill me as I stood staring up at him, ensnared like a cat in a cage.

  Johnny wasn’t the kind of guy I flirted with. Remembering how we’d talked on the phone, embarrassment clenched my stomach. I forced my attention to neutral space—the floor—catching details of his jacket and black T-shirt beneath, the leather pants he wore. Where did guys over six feet find leather pants? Johnny was at least six foot two. His motorcycle boots, with silver-plated chains clinking, oozed utter bad-boy coolness that no red-blooded female could deny—and added another inch to his height. His presence screamed power and danger.