Fairy Circle (26 page)

Chapter 14

J
ethin walked across the field at human speed, away from Saffron and her quaint farmhouse. He could have moved faster. He could have zipped faster than a hummingbird. But he chose this slow pace to ponder. When he came to the edge of the forest, he crunched through the dried, dead leaves, absently brushing at the twigs that poked his clothing. He decided not to return home. Not yet. He would feast again tonight. He didn’t usually eat twice. On the nights he visited Saffron, he dined before he saw her so that she would see him in his glory, his cheeks glowing pleasantly, calculated moments after the slaughter.

He remembered her naked admiration, her empathetic expressions as he told his ���story.” He snorted. What a crock he had offered up to her. Some of the story was true sure, then some of it was left out, some exaggerated, some completely fabricated…. He smiled. He had told her nothing of trickery. Nothing of hate and murder, and oh, how she had eaten it all up. How she cast those angel’s eyes upon him as if he were the biggest, saddest treasure on earth.

She would never change, he decided. She was the same in this incarnation as she was when he last knew her. She trusted him so completely. He could do no wrong, poor Jethin. He felt a bit of remorse, just the tiniest bit, as if a grain of sand was working its way into the wound that was his heart. This mess was not Saffron’s fault. She was stuck in the middle, now, as she had always been. He shrugged. Oh, well, he’d just try to do what had to be done and forget about it. She was a slightly annoying girl. He focused on this thought and hoped it would get him through his scheme’s fruition.

Now he could move faster. He was a blur shooting forth under the pale light of the crescent moon, weaving through the trees and cold streets of the sleepy town. When he arrived at the theatre, the late show had already let out. He knew Tammy would be inside, shutting down. Tammy would be alone.

He didn’t see her, but didn’t need to see her to find her. He sensed her heat as if he contained a built-in infrared seeker. That’s how they would describe it these days, in the 1700’s, he was simply the Devil.

She was kneeling down behind the candy counter unlocking the safe. He neared her without a sound on well-practiced feet. No one could hear him approach, not even an animal, if that was what he desired. His inhuman attributes had guided him effortlessly through many a quiet murder.

He was behind her and upon her and reaching for her long neck before she could take half a breath. “Oh, Jethin! You scared me.” Tammy grabbed her neck in surprise and shook her head.

Jethin could see by the rise under her thin t-shirt that she was very well pleased to see him. As usual, he used this to his advantage. He reached forward, removed her hand from her neck, and grabbed it himself. He rubbed her throat as he murmured to her.

She relaxed under his practiced hand, and let her eyelids drop. He had spent some years with snake charmers - he found them delightful, and adored the way they soothed the snakes in their baskets. Apply the right stimuli and any animal would respond. He considered himself akin to a butcher, tenderizing the meat for consumption. The pressure of his strokes grew. He watched her, released one hand from her neck, and slowly rubbed his fingers along her collarbone, then down to one breast which was mashed into and muffin-topping her too-small bra. “Did you shoot up yet?” He tried to keep the disgust out of his voice.

Her eyelids were stretched shut, enjoying his caresses. “No,” she gushed back, her voice thick with sexual tension. She couldn’t form another coherent word after that, just sat there making animal noises of satisfaction.

He studied her further and decided she might be telling the truth. He certainly hoped so. God, heroin made blood taste like shit and he wouldn’t appreciate it if she was lying to him.

Tammy’s eyes snapped open. Unfortunately, she found her voice and whispered, “Are you going to give it to me tonight, Jethin?” She spoke using her itty-bitty-baby voice.

He wished he was capable of retching. “Give me what I want first. Then, we’ll see.” He smiled at her, revealing neither fangs nor disgust.

“
We been goin’ out, foreva. I’m so ready for you.”

“
We’ve been courting for three weeks, Tammy.”

“
Yeah, and you’re like, so awesomely kinky.” She giggled and moved her long, ash-blonde hair from her neck. There were two small pricks in her skin, scabbed over from the last time he partook of her. He felt her freeze up when his teeth sliced through the old wound. She bit down on her bottom lip and tried not to scream. The sharp pain was quickly followed by sweet, sweet ecstasy. She fell back against the candy counter, he going with her and supporting her weight so his teeth didn’t rip out of her neck. He had learned long ago that if you didn’t support the falling body you’d wind up with a jugular dangling from a fang and blood spilling everywhere.

She started to moan and pant as if in the throes of outrageous passion. Jethin took deep pulls on her; she was a perfectly primed pump. Apparently, the exquisiteness of their coupling wasn’t enough for her. Tonight, she wanted more and chose that moment to try something she would never try again. Usually, when he ate at her, she lay limp - shoulders slumped, arms hanging, hands resting palms up on the dirty candy floor, and her legs splayed wide as he knelt between them.

But tonight, she suddenly raised her hand to grope at his crotch. Jethin’s nostrils flared in alarm. He chomped into her with all of his teeth, crunching past muscle and tendon. Her arm froze in midair, and her eyes widened and began to water at the impossible pain he was inflicting. He growled once, like a lion gnawing a gazelle. He sucked at her neck with such sudden strength, her breasts very nearly inverted. Her arms flailed only once before she was completely drained of blood and fluid.

He was that quick.

His fangs retracted as he withdrew from her. He knew she was dead, but slapped her face anyway. Had she been able to reach him, she would have realized his impotence, the soft mass at his crotch that for one shining speck of time in his long-drawn-out existence had been his everything. Not only his source of pleasure, but of his pride and strength, prowess and power. “How dare you!” he screamed at her dead and staring eyes. He fell to his rear-end on the dirty candy floor, breathing heavily, and slumped on the side of the freshly-disinfected candy counter. He swiped at the strand of ooze at his mouth and continued to eye her.

Her mouth was agape, her limbs sprawled, and her eyes glazed, forever reflecting that final moment of shock. Mostly, he relished taking prey. In life, Tammy had been as dumb as a cluck and just as harmless. But she lied all the time. She had lied tonight. He had tasted the heroin in her blood with the first pull. The vile bitterness of it burned his throat now. From terrible experience, he knew he could look forward to a night of cramping and tearing, excruciating pain in the region where his intestines nested and, once upon a time, functioned properly. He didn’t know why drugs affected vampires in this way; the government hadn’t gone that far in their testing. But he knew if he could destroy every drug on earth and everyone who had ever touched them, he would. Then he could feed without fear of gas pains. A sharp pain ripped through the small of his back and he gasped. Mentally, he added this to
the list
, the list of everything in his life that had gone wrong.

And he blamed it all on Li.

In total silence, he slunk out into the night and hid in the obscurities of the dark and the ambiguity of the shadows.

Chapter 15

T
he next night, Jethin didn’t go to see Saffron. He hid in his limestone cave to pout and ponder as he watched waves crash below. It was a funny place, his cave. Every half-century or so, people or creatures would materialize from the white wall in back. He’d eat them and throw their carcasses in the sea before they got two seconds to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at the fantastic new world they found themselves in. Sometimes the carcasses caused a great stir on the news. The footage played over and over again as the skeleton was explained by a fever-eyed cryptozoologist. But he didn’t think about those things tonight.

Tonight he was back in Ireland. When he used to be human. When Li was human too, and her name had been Molly.

Tammy’s dirty blood boiled within him at the mere memory of Molly. In fact, Molly had been with him since last night, ever since he told Saffron the edited edition of his becoming a vampire. He easily talked around her existence - not so much as an “ahhhhh” or fumbling silence as he smoothly cut her from the portrayal. Her face had swum in front of him the entire time, still jeering and laughing like a fiend. Everything that had gone so terribly wrong in his life was entirely Li/Molly’s fault.

Molly was the little girl who lived down the lane when Jethin was struggling through life on his potato farm. Molly was the girl of Jethin’s dreams. She was the only child of well-to-do parents. Her mother was a quiet, easy woman with thick, dark red hair always precisely pinned. Her father was gregarious and debonair, an Earl or some such thing. He was never around. Molly was more like her father, which Jethin, blinded by infatuation, refused to see.

Molly was Jethin’s friend. He discovered her when he was very young on a barefoot hike through the lowlands of bracken and gorse, long before his Da had keeled. It was high summer and the gorse was blazing. The sun slanted down the western sky and stabbed through the shafts, making the world look like it was on fire. The gorse plant had served Jethin’s family in their desperate life of need. When they had sheep, they used gorse for dying wool. Now that the sheep were gone, they still found many uses for the hardy plant. They used it to light their fires; it could ignite with a single spark, and they used it to brush the chimney. Jethin used it as a tool to till the soil.

In the very old days, Da used it to flavor his whiskey. Back when he felt moved to flavor his drinks. Back when he could afford whiskey. Later, Da took whatever drink he could get, as raw as it was, as long as it was alcohol.

Jethin had found Molly beyond the gorse and on the far side of a little stream sitting among the wildflowers that dotted bank. She was weaving a wreath of flowers, working rapturously and never taking her light, violet eyes from the task at hand, as drowsy bees droned round her head. Her golden hair, made almost white by the summer sun, trailed down her back and cascaded over her shoulders.

He loved her instantly.

She was younger than he was, by three years, but her father’s money allowed her to be worldlier than Jethin. She became his teacher. She was a wild girl, mischievous and always into other people’s business or places where she didn’t belong. They were sly, the two of them, as quick as the little people, they were never caught doing their sheep-worrying, or milk-spilling, or wash-stealing as the sheets and clothing hung drying from someone’s line or fence. At first, they spoiled their stolen treasure (she especially loved to have great, rousing fires) till he finally told her his family really could use the things they stole, and from then on she gave over with a smirk.

Over the years, Jethin begrudgingly spent less time with Molly. He had to assume more and more of the role as head of household while his father, like a fleck of something impure, drifted lower and lower to the bottom of the bottle. His sisters took Molly for their playmate, which sparked Jethin’s jealousy and made him surlier. His love for her, however, did not wane, and he kept an unblinking eye on her when she was in the yard with his sisters.

Molly grew. Her body plumped under her dresses and petticoats. She had a milkmaid’s line of breast and waist and hip, and enjoyed stuffing her form into clothes that were just this side of too small. She drove Jethin mad with longing.

A few days before he met Claudia, and then Cecilia, before the whole horrid thing happened, he went to Molly. He found her within the grape arbor, shaded by heavy leaves, huddled in a corner under an ill-kept mess of vines so thick the sun could not penetrate. She had her little sketchpad with her and was doing an unlikely illustration of her father in jester attire. She didn’t look up when Jethin entered, but continued to draw furiously.

Jethin observed her in silence as she slashed a crooked line for her father’s mouth and shaded heavily his mocking eyes. “Do you know where he is today, my father?” She fisted her hand around the pencil and slashed again, so hard the paper tore under the pressure. Jethin said nothing. He knew better than to offer words of condolence or advice when Molly was in a fit about her father, which was often, as her father was usually doing something wrong. His wife gave him no discourse for his pusillanimous actions. It seemed it was only his child who held such disdain for his sins, and she, so very much like him. “I believe right now, at this very moment, my father is mounting the Widow Murphy.” She slashed the drawing again. “And probably her dog as well.”

Jethin’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and although he had olive skin made darker by the summer sun, his cheeks grew pink. He cast his eyes aside and feigned interest in a rodent hole at the base of the arbor post. She had never used such crude words before and it immediately drove him to imaginings of doing very much the same to her. But not her dog. He couldn’t raise his head on account of the shame of it.

Silence.

He felt her eyes upon him, boring into his skin. His flesh began to tingle as if her glance was actually searing him. “Jethin.” Her voice was low and smoky, quite different from the squeal of rage not three minutes earlier. “Do you want me, Jethin?”