Chapter 9

Sunday was the day Mindy visited her mom, and I visited my dad. It was the day we clocked out of college/apartment life and went home to get spoiled for a bit. This was also the first Sunday after my new discovery that there really were monsters in the world, and a good many of them were hunting me. Still, it was Sunday, a holy day, so I was off-limits according to the rules.

I'd texted Jude early this morning with a demand to know the "rules." This was how the conversation went.

Me: Explain the rules. Please.

Jude: High and lower demons cannot possess a human host (or Vessel) on holy days, including the three days before Easter and that Sunday, Jewish Passover, Yom Kippur, and the Sabbath.

Me: What happened to Christmas?

Jude: That's not truly the day of Christ's birth. December 25th was originally a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice.

Me: Oh.

Jude: Demons are forbidden from entering sacred ground, including churches, synagogues, graveyards, and other places that are blessed.

Me: What about holy water?

Jude: What about it?

Me: Does it burn them or something if you throw some on them?

Jude: There is no such thing as vampires.

Me: I know, but we're talking about demons.

At this point, there was a long pause where I could hear the heavy sigh through cyberspace.

Jude: No. Holy water does not affect them. Nor do crucifixes or other sacred objects.

Me: Well, that sucks. Is that all?

Jude: Those are the basics. Other rules pertaining specifically to Flamma I'll explain as we go along.

Me: Cool. Have a nice day! ?

Pause. Pause. Pause.

Jude: ?

I almost lost it! Jude sent me a smiley face. With my newfound knowledge, I looked forward to a day of normalcy. I wanted to relax like I did before all this began. Even more, I wanted to do something without my babysitter/guardian tagging along.

So, I took a quick shower, noting how quickly and smoothly the wound on my abdomen was healing. I twisted my hair into a messy bun, put on my favorite jeans and the sunny yellow Victorian-tailored blouse that made me feel pretty and sweet, then headed to Dad's as I did every weekend. Without informing Jude.

Dad was grilling burgers on the deck. Erik stood next to him, sipping a Bud Light. Even in casual clothes, he appeared tailored. I swear, he probably ironed his jeans and T-shirts.

Erik had moved here from Ohio a long time ago as a researcher for the National Wetlands Research Center. My dad had sort of adopted him when he started working nights at the dojo, so he was always around.

"Hey, guys!"

"There she is. You hungry?"

"Starving."

Dad gave me a one-armed bear hug with a spatula in the other hand.

"How'd that hot date go?" I asked Erik with a smile.

Dad placed the patties on a plate on the grill sideboard. "What hot date?"

Erik blushed all the way down his neck. I laughed.

"It was fine, Gen."

"Mmm, fine. Sounds exciting."

"Sweetie, would you go get the lettuce and onions in the fridge? Today's nice. We'll eat out here."

"Sure."

As I marched into the kitchen, my VS whispered over something, then it was gone. Not a warning that Flamma were near like last night outside The Dungeon. No, it was almost a soft tapping, searching for something. As soon as I sensed it, the feeling left me.

When I opened the fridge, I burst out laughing. Dad always delivered his birthday presents in odd places. On my fourteenth birthday, I had to follow The Nightmare Before Christmas ringer "This is Halloween" until I found my first iPhone wrapped inside my stuffed Jack Skellington propped on the fireplace mantel. That was a cool one. I kept the same ringer for a year.

Now, leaning in front of the platter of sliced onions, tomatoes, and shredded lettuce, there was a large rectangular envelope with my name scrawled on the front in Dad's slanted hand. He sketched an apple next to my name. Weird. I took the platter and the envelope out to the deck and sat down with the guys.

Dad grinned. I smiled back as I opened the envelope. The card was sweet, with a cartoon daddy and daughter hugging on the front. Inside, the bold font read: No matter where you go, you're always Daddy's little girl. Underneath, he'd written: I've been stubborn about this long enough. I'm finally letting you go. Happy birthday, my beautiful baby girl.

I started to tear up at the sentiment, having no idea what this meant until I read the brochure that slid into my lap. On the front were photos of Times Square, MOMA, the Statue of Liberty, Broadway. The heading read Come to the City that Never Sleeps. I squealed with delight.

"Ow," said Erik, "bring it down a notch."

"Dad! Seriously! Like seriously, seriously?"

Mindy and I had wanted to go together for ages. She'd already been twice with her mother, but Dad would never let me tag along. I jumped up and squeezed him tight, nearly strangling him from behind.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

I did a giddy little dance before settling back into my chair, perusing the pamphlet.

"Well, you'll be going with Mindy and her mother the week of Thanksgiving. You can even see the Thanksgiving Day Parade while you're there."

"Mindy knows? How did she keep this from me?"

That girl could never keep a secret.

"Actually, I asked her mother to keep her out of the loop until today."

Suddenly my iPhone vibrated on the table with a crazy, excited text from Mindy, including twenty smiley faces and exclamation points. Talk about timing. I giggled while texting her back.

Then it hit me. How could I possibly go to New York now? How many demons were traipsing around New York? I might as well serve myself on a platter with an apple in my mouth.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" asked Dad, his butter knife midair with mayo on it. "Why the sad face?"

I couldn't tell him the truth. Now I was reduced to lying to everyone I cared about. I felt even worse.

"Oh, I was just thinking about Mom, how she loved the Thanksgiving Day Parade."

I knew this would dampen the mood, but I had to say something. And I wanted to say something that was at least half the truth.

I hated lying, and I hated liars. Now suddenly, I was one of them. But in all honesty, my mom did love the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I can see her now, doling out cinnamon rolls while the turkey was still baking, saying, "Oh, look, Genevieve! It's Charlie Brown."

"Thank you, Dad. This is an awesome present," I said, forcing myself to smile and take a bite of my burger that threatened to lodge in my throat.

Erik glanced at his watch. "Oh, so sorry. I totally forgot I have a field appointment with my supervisor today."

"Where y'all headed today?" asked Dad.

"Not sure. Again, sorry to run so quickly."

"You didn't even finish your burger," I said, pointing to his plate.

He grimaced as he rose from his chair. "I'll have to take it to go."

He wrapped it up in a napkin and was gone. After lunch, I did the dishes while Dad adjourned to the sofa to watch the Saints play the Falcons on television. I wandered through, not really feeling like watching football today. Dad stretched out on the sofa, shoes off, and propped his feet on the coffee table.

"That's right, Drew! You got it!"

Touchdown. While Dad watched Drew Brees take the team to a victory, I walked up the wooden staircase to the second floor. I knew exactly where I was going, where I'd wanted to go ever since I had that nightmare at Jude's house. My dad kept one room entirely devoted to my mother's artwork, our own personal gallery. And memorial. After she died, he refused to part with any of her paintings, no matter how much collectors had offered for them. And they'd offered quite a lot.

The room's décor was sparse but elegant. Underneath a Persian rug of burgundy and creams, a gold brocade sofa with a matching chaise sat around an oval cherry coffee table. A porcelain vase painted with two lovers in Victorian clothing on a picnic stood on a glass side table. A large mirror with gold trim squared itself above the antique fireplace. Having been built before central air-conditioning or heating, many of the rooms in our City Park home had fireplaces, not all functioning. There were no other furnishings except for the wall-to-wall paintings.

Starting with the wall to the right of the fireplace, I perused my mother's art. She focused on remaking the masterworks with new vitality, energy, and emotion. Here she'd given her own rendition of Monet's water lilies in shades of violet, purple and white. She recreated Degas's dancers into otherworldly angels floating on the stage. The back wall was a random mix of reinvented works by Van Gogh, Matisse, and Renoir. All of them reflected an inner joy which might or might not have been present in the original.

The last wall waited for me like the midnight toll of a clock. Among some rather distorted renditions of Picasso's works was "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon."

The original had always given me the creeps. Still, my mother's version transformed Picasso's black period even blacker with the chopped, distorted limbs of prostitutes who stared wide-eyed out from the canvas. A horror show of twisted, mangled women, both beautiful and terrifying. More than this, two others had always haunted me.

My mother's adaptation of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" held the gaze of a young woman looking on in the face of fear. If you glanced at it, there was only a slight difference from the master's version. The Baroque shadows were now dark crimson. But on closer study, you'd see the haunted expression in the girl's eyes, as if whatever she beheld made her blood run cold.

She had frozen in fright upon seeing something, long enough for the artist to capture her fear. Her eyes widened just enough and in such a way to make the viewer tremble. In the glassy reflection of both eyes was the reflection of a dark figure approaching.

The worst part of this painting was that the girl had a distinct similarity to my mother. My stomach squeezed tight.

As my eyes wandered over canvas after canvas, my fingers played with the St. George medal around my neck, a nervous habit when Mom came to mind.

I moved on to the last one, far more disturbing. It was the remake of Paul DeLaRoche's "Le Jeune Martyre." I'd seen pictures of the original in the Louvre. A beautiful, angelic martyr floated in a pool with her hands bound. She was radiant, emanating an ethereal light as her gossamer gown drifted wide like a cloud. A golden halo crowned her head in death. The lingering shadows on the fringe of the painting hid a man leaving the scene, the one who had doomed her to this untimely death.

My mother painted it exactly like the original. Not one change in hue, not one variation in line or form. Someone could've taken a picture of LaRoche's in the Louvre, framed it side by side, and no one could detect the cheat. What troubled me most of all was the fact that this was the last work she ever painted.

I sucked in a breath. VS screaming. Flamma present and behind me. I spun around. Jude leaned against the fireplace with his arms crossed, shoulders rigid. Black eyes measuring, calculating. The door was still closed.

"How did you get in here? How did you get past my dad?"

He remained still, watchful.

"There are other means of entering a building than the front door."

"Yeah, there are. It's called breaking and entering."

He made no reply. I felt invaded here in this private place. I'm not sure why it unnerved me so much.

"Why didn't you tell me you were leaving home today?"

"Actually, this is my home. My apartment is a temporary place where I live with my best friend, but this is my real home. And I didn't think I had to tell you where I was every second of the day."

"It's dangerous."

"It's Sunday. There are rules. You told me so. I'm safe."

"I'll cast this house in illusion as well. But you are never safe away from a protector. Be sure of that."

"Away from you, right? And why do you even give a damn? What does a demon hunter have to do with a Vessel anyway? Is there an ulterior motive I should know about? Are you even listening to me?"

His gaze had strayed to the paintings behind me, specifically to the martyred beauty in a drowning pool. The expression on his face shifted, became harder. He straightened away from the mantel.

"These were your mother's paintings." He stated it as fact, not a question. His face had become a granite mask.

"Yes. And this is a private collection."

I wanted to shield her work from his eyes. Why was I so defensive?

He walked toward me, boots echoing on the wood floor. His attention remained fixed on the canvas above my head. He stood a foot away, for once not in my personal space, finally dropping his gaze to mine.

"She was mad."

I flinched as if he'd slapped me. "You don't know anything about her. These are paintings, just…" Flustered and angry, I wanted to hit him.

He scanned the room carefully, finally coming back to "Le Jeune Martyre." "She was insane."

His words were scorched with a cold rigidity. No spark of light in his eyes now. Why was he saying such a heartless thing about my mother?

"You didn't know her."

"It's apparent. You had to have known this already."

"Stop saying that! Stop it! Just get out! I don't want you in my home. I don't want you invading my privacy. You've already taken everything else away—my future, my hopes, my freedom. Leave me alone!"

I yelled. I raged. I cried. I buried my face in my hands, letting it all out. My VS shrank away, and I knew he was gone without opening my eyes. I was more alone than I'd ever been in my entire life. More alone than the day we said goodbye to my mother.

I ran to my childhood room, closed the door, fell onto my bed, and wept. The world had dealt me a cruel, cruel hand, and I wasn't up for it. I grieved.

My old life was dead, and the new one was too much for me to bear. Thunder rumbled in the near-distance, reverberating off my windowpane. As sobs subsided onto my damp pillow, I drifted into a broken, dreamless sleep.

The soft soundof pattering rain against the window woke me. The day had darkened, making my white room gray. I roused and trudged downstairs. The television still hummed with football commentators, but for another game. Dad had dozed too. I sat on the end of the sofa, gazing at the man who'd shaped my world.

Dad was a tall physical powerhouse. Not to mention that several of the single moms coming into the dojo tried their damnedest to get his attention. To me, he was Dad—protection, safety, and love.

Though I knew he loved me dearly, he could no longer protect and keep me safe. There is only one person I knew of who could, and I'd sent him away.

Dad shifted and opened his eyes. "Hey, there," he said, voice groggy.

"Hey."

"Why so down? Still thinking of your mother?"

He knew I only went to the upstairs gallery when I missed her and needed to connect somehow. I nodded. He sat up, rubbing his face with his hands. His hair was sweetly tousled.

"Did you…?" I started. I stopped. Unsure whether I could ask this question.

"What is it? Go ahead."

"Was she, was she sick in the end?"

He sobered, angling toward me. Rain poured onto the deck outside, mirroring my emotions. "Gen, your mother was sick. Of course, she was. Anyone who would do what she did must be."

"But what I mean was, had she gone crazy? Like, really and truly crazy?"

I had no more tears to shed on the matter. I wanted to know the truth. I was only ten when she killed herself. I'd gone through all the emotions a child does—blaming myself, blaming my father, blaming the world. Now I just wanted to know really and truly—why?

"Toward the end, she became restless, obsessed, painting all the time and never painting the beautiful things she used to. She was angry, afraid, and depressed. I took her to a psychiatrist, but nothing helped. Not even medication. In the end, she only saw one way to end her suffering."

He reached over and took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

"It had nothing to do with you. You know that, right?"

"Yes, Dad." I nodded and tried to smile.

I gave him a hug to reassure him I hadn't fallen into my own depression. Sometimes he watched me with an odd expression. I wondered now if he was waiting for my mother's madness to rear its ugly head as if it were hereditary or something.

"I've gotta go, Dad. Class early in the morning."

He saw me out to the porch. I made a mad dash for my car, realizing with a sharp pang that Jude's motorcycle was nowhere in sight. Nor was he.

The awful things I'd said started spinning through my head on the drive home. He didn't deserve my anger, my bitterness. The worst part was that he had been right, and deep down, I knew it all along. Why he became so cold while staring at the painting, I don't know, but no matter what, I was still the one in the wrong.

"Oh hell!"

I hit the steering wheel with the palm of my hand and headed for the French Quarter. The streets were empty with the downpour settling in. Lightning flashed. I pulled onto the curb a block down from Jude's place, the closest spot I could find.

Of course, I had no umbrella. I never did. Mindy kept like four in her car, all in varying shades and patterns to match whatever ensemble she happened to be wearing when caught in the rain. Me, I never had one. I ran as fast as I could, realizing the rain had pushed in a calm front. I could feel the air dropping by degrees since I'd left my dad's ten minutes ago.

I ran into the alcove and found the gate locked. I was nearly soaked through, shivering and wishing I could get into Jude's warm living room and wait there. Perhaps I should come back later. My emotions had caused me to react irrationally, defensively.

Discovering that my mother had indeed been ill, choosing suicide over fighting another day left a trail of bitterness in my gut. I could never face the truth before now. Before Jude. I didn't even know what I was going to say to him. I just knew I needed to apologize. He didn't deserve my anger.

The temperature was dropping, and I had no idea when he was coming back. I had decided to leave when my VS tingled. I felt him approaching. He rounded the corner, swathed in shadow.

"Jude, I wanted to—"

My pulse sped up frantically. He stalked toward me in long, smooth strides. Wearing black jeans and a white button-down, wet and clinging to his skin, he moved with determined purpose straight toward me. As if he knew I was there. As if he knew I was waiting. His eyes gleamed molten gold, and in them, I read only one feral emotion—hunger.

Never had I seen this hue or emotion shining in his eyes. Not like this, edged with steel and violence. I knew he was something other, but at that moment, I honestly feared where he'd come from and who'd made him.

I couldn't move. I waited, like a doe in the headlights.

He reached me, grasped my wrists, and pinned them to the wall above my head. He crushed his lips to mine and covered my body with his in one swift move. A whimpering noise escaped my lips, barely, before he devoured any other sound of protest or pleasure.

Demanding submission, he explored my mouth with lips and tongue. God, how I'd imagined what kissing him would be like. This wasn't it. Fire branded me from the inside out. All thoughts of anything else fled. Gone. All I wanted was this. All I could think, smell, breathe was Jude. His body pressed against mine, a visceral friction clawing between us.

One hand cuffed my wrists; the other gripped my jaw firmly, keeping me in place so he could do as he pleased. I could hardly breathe from the shock of the assault to my senses as he slanted his mouth over mine, tongue stroking deep.

His hand trailed down my body, over my soaked shirt, then under. A large hand squeezed my hip, caressing up the side of my waist along bare skin. He nipped at my lower lip as if he longed to consume me, bit by bit. I wasn't complaining. He released my mouth, biting along my jaw. So rough.

"So sweet," he whispered.

Words I'd never imagined he'd say. I panted, trying to catch my breath. He trailed scorching kisses down my neck. My skin burned, like being licked by fire. My Vessel sense flared into orbit, screaming for these sensations to stop. I wondered fleetingly how my mind and my body could have totally different opinions on the matter.

He shifted away just enough so his hand could trail over my rib cage, then higher. He clasped my breast—a proprietary feel, not a lover's caress. He pinched my nipple through my bra—hard—rolling it till it peaked for him. He growled and rolled his pelvis, grinding his hard dick between my parted legs.

"Wait, Jude," I murmured.

He apparently was as overwhelmed as I was. He lowered his hands to my outer thighs and lifted me up, pushing his pelvis to hold me in place, again showing me the extent of his desire, grinding against me on a moan.

His desire was more than evident. My thoughts scrambled from the sensations burning through my body. Too much. Too much. The dynamic of our relationship had changed in a blink.

Feeling faint, knowing I needed to reel this in as we were both overcome, I tried to lower myself. He pushed harder against me, growling. Dropping one leg, he hooked his fingers over the collar of my blouse and yanked it down over one shoulder, popping the top three buttons. Sharp teeth grazed the skin along my lower neck near my pulse.

"Jude!"

Warning bells clanged inside, trying to wake me up. I heard them. Too late. Pointed teeth punctured my skin. I cried out. Stinging pain ripped through me as he drank from the bite, sucking hard and fast.

"Stop!"

Panic seized me. I shoved at his chest, moving him only an inch, but enough to get both feet on the ground. He released my throat with a groan, his tongue licking one more time over the bite. I stared where my hands landed, splayed across his chest. Through the thin shirt and along the V of the open neckline, I saw…nothing. No sharp-edged, lovely lines of a cresting Celtic cross. My heart hammered like a rabbit who's been caught by the cat, waiting for the death blow.

"You have no tattoos," was all I could say, stupidly. The truth dawning second by second, the air growing colder.

"I have no use for that."

Not Jude's voice. Somehow, I found the courage to look up into his eyes. Molten gold glimmered, then bled into crimson.

"Oh God," I whispered in a trembling broken voice.

His lips contorted into a lopsided grin, exposing a full row of sharp teeth, two extending longer than the rest.

"No, baby. Guess again."