CALLA (The Blood Lords) Read online

  CALLA

  Part One - THE BLOOD LORDS

  by

  B.E. Larkin

  Chapter One – CALLA

  Sexy Needles Broussard, that's the name on my official birth certificate. Honest. Lucky for me my father always called me Calla after the lilies he said my mother loved. Maybe my mother was doped up or looked into a crystal ball when she named me and foresaw a future for me as a dominatrix or tattoo artist. Obviously, she gave no thought as to how a child would ever survive with a name like that, so I guess I should be grateful that at least my father was sane. At my first middle school, I did try to go by “Needles” in an attempt to appear tougher, but it really didn't matter because no one there even knew me and after the first week at any school, no one was ever stupid enough to challenge me anymore. Essentially that meant I fit in there as well as I had at the previous dozen schools I'd attended. Short version, school sucked, but I survived.

  And I should probably mention that Mom's crystal ball must have needed a new battery because I didn't end up in either of those careers. Not that what I do now is any better.

  I don't even know if I should blame her because in my mind my mother is nothing more to me than a broken kaleidoscope filled with the memories of others. Tantalizing colorful words – beautiful, happy, insane, lover, mystic – tumble and fall against the background of dark nothingness that is my own experience of her. That handful of words, those are the bits I've gleaned from my uncle and my father, not a whole lot on which to build an in-depth picture of the woman who deserted me sometime after birth, far too early for me to form any images of her for myself.

  It's not even comforting to be named after her favorite flower. She left me behind. Even that's unclear. I don't know if she's alive, don't know if my father loved her or hated her, whether he drove her away or searched for her until his heart broke and that was the moment he became the strange silent man who has raised me. Maybe he killed her which would definitely explain why we've moved so many times, with never any forwarding address and no goodbyes. In nineteen years, that's all the information about my mother that I've managed to pry from my father. So, now you know as much about my history as I do.

  As for vital stats, I'm slim or slender – the difference eludes me - but not skinny, brown eyes, straight brown hair I must have gotten from her since his is black and curly. All in all, pretty average, except for remarkable night vision, chronic insomnia and the spring of dark thoughts that bubbles up more and more lately and makes me wonder if I'm silently drifting across some line into insanity. It's possible that's what happened to my mother. I've read that insanity can be genetic. For all I know, she may still be alive, sedated in some padded room somewhere, trying to remember how the sun filtered through the Cypress trees around her home, remembering how once her belly swelled and she produced life. Does she remember me at all?

  But right now, her possible insanity and my sleep deprived mental state don't matter because I'm running late. As usual. It's time to stop thinking in circles and move.

  There's a faint hum behind the last door which means he's working. I open it slowly so I don't startle him, not that I've ever seen him flinch, it's more that I'm afraid of what I'll see. And I haven't ever seen anything different than what I see now, so my fear makes no sense. He keeps the lights so dim I wonder sometimes whether he didn't go blind long ago and just no longer notices such details as night and day. In his hand the electric needle moves lazily like some Steampunk extension of himself rather than a separate tool, as if the essence of his being flows through to pierce the skin of others and leave it stained in all the shades of his own unvoiced pain.

  The woman lying in front of him doesn't notice me. None of them ever see anything but him. Each one arrives frightened and eager to bare her flesh to his eyes. They lock onto those black eyes like junkies spotting their next fix and he never even glances at them, doesn't respond to the tremble in their voices, or the silent offering of so much more than the little patches of skin which they pay him to transform into art of agonizing beauty.

  Black curls falling around his face, he always keeps his gaze on the target, that pulsing neck, slender back or breast, which rises and falls more rapidly as his needles dance across the skin while tiny beads of blood spring up to veil the faces forming underneath. Later, alone, these women will look at those vivid, fine features inked upon their flesh and grow desperate with grief and longing. And they will return for another rendering of those disturbing dark eyes he paints upon them, which gaze back at the viewer with pain pulled from somewhere deep in the bones. Just one more mark, one more touch, one more chance to gaze at him. To hope for something they can not possess. Don't ask me how I know this is true, but it is.

  I used to pity them. On an angry day, I hated them. Mostly, they only irritate me now. How can they not see what he is?

  T'Jean - short for Petit Jean, the same as his father and his father, all the way back through generations of bayou men to that distant relation who was the original Jean - looks up. There is nothing in his eyes, not for them, not for me, but once again, I'm sure he's reading my thoughts. Even more unnerving than those eyes is the needle, which continues moving through the turns and curves of a remembered design as he keeps his gaze on me and waits.

  “I'm going out, I have work,” I whisper, and get the slight inclination of his head which passes for a nod. His eyes drop, his face shielded once more by that long hair. A sliver of light from the cracked open door falls on the bead of blood quivering under his needle. As I watch it, my eyes blur, the droplet glows like a living jewel and it swells, round and scarlet until it enfolds the room, the world. My heart pounds in my chest. I can not move until he looks up again. Something fierce and frightening flashes behind his empty eyes and I stumble back out, feeling his gaze on me until the door closes and the thud against the door frame severs the brief connection to my father.

  My, “hey, stupid, you're late” alarm on the cell phone sounds and yanks me back into reality. I know, of course, that Officer James H. Jacqua will wait, but I rush anyway, barreling out the door without locking it. No one will come here, no one ever does except those women. As I snap the leather jacket around me, it occurs to me that I have no idea how they find him. There's no sign in front of this place or any of the other houses we've rented. Like all the rest of the forgotten places we've lived in, this one's pretty much in the middle of nowhere, so he's not definitely not getting drive by business. He must run ads that I don't know about.

  I gun the Valkyrie from the shadow of the house, realize I forgot the helmet and keep going. So, maybe I'll wind up with my brains pureed on the side of the road, but why throw away a perfectly good chance to aggravate a cop?

  Chapter Two - JIMMY

  He's by the window at Sherry's as usual when I skid the bike to a halt parallel to his SUV. His own vehicle, no cruiser, which means he's in jeans and a polo instead of the tan and brown cop suit. This is not a sanctioned meeting, he's on his own here because he's meeting with me. Let's just say I'm not popular with his brethren. Or anyone else actually. Which is ironic since, outside of my own small family, no one really knows me at all.

  “Where's your helmet, Calla?” First thing he says to me, nothing about my hair being six inches shorter or how am I or whether he still has mixed feelings about me, which, I already know he does. Just enforcing the helmet safety thing, because in his mind, a cop is a cop is a cop. That's his life raft, the reality he clings to whenever he is forced to deal with things he doesn't understand - like me.

  As cops go, this one isn't so bad – twenty five, big, blonde, one of those jaws which looks like they should use him for an all American soldier recruiting poster. But Jimmy never went over there, he
says there are enough enemies right here. Oh yeah, because Portland is such a dangerous place. The risk of being run down by a vegan bicyclist, or purchasing an improperly fermented Kombucha or perhaps drinking too much organic micro brew, must be terrifying to our gentle population. Whatever. If Jimmy ever smiled, he'd have a hundred women trying to catch him instead of the paltry dozen or so that go out of their way to attract his attention. No, I'm not one of them. I don't go weak and stupid for any guy. Which doesn't mean I haven't thought – more than once - about how incredibly sexy faintly bloody fingernail trails down his naked back would look. But I'm on his “keep at arm's length” list. Why, I don't know. I

  sometimes suspect that I may be the only one on that list because for all the rules he's stretched for me, that's the only one he won't break. If it made any kind of sense at all, I'd say he was afraid of me, but then he's the one with the big gun and departmental backup while all I have is a knife, a little self defense training and a reasonably bad attitude.

  “Sorry I'm late,” I strip off my leathers and he looks the other way. “You're always late, Needles,” he says watching my reflection in the glass. Needles, huh? He's reminding me not so subtly that he knows who I really am. At least he believes he does. If he actually does know, it would sure be nice if he'd break down and let me in on the secret. “Why do we have to meet here? The coffee sucks.” I slide into the booth just in time for the waitress to pour a cup of their notoriously nasty brown liquid. A couple of little containers of fake cream and some sugar and now it's just sort of a hospital wall beige. Not exactly a huge improvement.

  Then I get that crawling feeling, moving up my spine and forget all about the lousy coffee. I'm being watched. I think. And this isn't the first time I've had the sensation. I glance causually outside but there are only a handful of cars and the Valkryie. No sinister lurking figures.

  “Helmet,” Jimmy repeats, forcing me to put a lid on my paranoia. “Left it under the bed,” I mumble. It's not, it's right by the front door at home where I always put it, but if he's going to give me grief, I'll send some back. “Or maybe I left it by the whips and chains.” I know he doesn't want think about my bed. Because he does. Sometimes that look slips out, the expression that says he's thinking about me in such an unprofessional manner and he can't stop himself. Last time he did that, his eyes got so smokey I wanted to crawl right over the table and really show him something to get overheated about. But I hesitated too long. What if he freaked out and shot me? By the time I convinced myself Jimmy would never hurt me, it was too late. He'd jumped back into Mr. Law Enforcement mode.

  Just like he is now. He frowns at the distracted look on my face – were my eyes getting smokey? - and slides a folder across the table. In addition to being hyper moral, he's not comfortable unless he actually has hard copies of everything. For a hot young guy, he's total Old School. Try to imagine Sir Lancelot being issued a Glock and a Police Interceptor instead of the traditional sword and stallion package. Seriously, very, very Old School, which is why he just can't show me everything on his tablet and save the trouble of recycling.

  “How's your father?” Okay, that right there is the other part of his mind I can't figure out. He keeps it locked down as tight as his feelings for me. I tell myself it's another reason to hang around him. Far as I know, they've never met, but Jimmy has some definite ideas about T'Jean and I get the feeling that none of them are good. He doesn't explain what or why, but if he's planning to take my father down for something, I want to know in advance – so I can prevent it . Yeah, my Dad is weird, but he's my father. He's never hit me or yelled at me. For that matter, he's never said he loved me, either, but I know he does in some primal, sleeping tiger way and I don't want Jimmy to wake that tiger. Besides, except for Micheal - wherever the hell my equally mysterious uncle is right now - T'Jean's all I've got. And blood is blood is blood. Everyone needs a life raft.

  “He's great, undoubtedly thinking about taking up the bagpipes and hiking through Scotland, thanks for asking,” I snark at him. He nods and moves along. “Take and a look and tell me what you think.”

  “The rain forest is disappearing because of people like you,” I tell him, shuffling through all his bits paper to get to the pictures of this one. She has dark hair like me, but hers is curly, the curly that goes crazy when it rains, face a little round, eyes shy, friendly enough, generic pretty, the kind of girl you can look at and know exactly what her mother looks like. That sidetracks me. Do I look like my mother? There are no pictures of her. I insisted, years ago, that my father must have some photo of her. “Paper doesn't hold the truth of a person,” he said and that was that. I couldn't even complain because that response was more than the usual day's allotment of words for him.

  Once I did whine about how little he talks and he just looked at me. “What do you need me to say, lily girl?” Something in his voice cracked my heart. He sounded as if I were standing so far away he could never reach me even though he wanted to. I never asked again. In that instant I glimpsed the broken T'Jean inside the sleeping tiger and the underpinnings of our relationship shifted, silently, like everything else between us. I became my father's protector without the faintest clue as to what or whom I must guard him against.

  Jimmy clears his throat to bring me back to him and the lousy coffee. I slide the before picture to one side and take a breath and he reads it right. “No scene shots. She may still be alive.” That should make it easy, but when I look at the next photo it takes a second to accept that this is the same girl. “What's her name?” “Natalie, Natalie Silvers.” No, no way this new girl goes by Natalie anymore. It's not the short spiky hair or the drastic weight loss or even the row of copper nails that now line one ear, that girl from the first photo is gone forever. And the new face that glares up at me is angry...and terrified out of her mind. Her eyes make my spine cringe. What has she seen terrible enough to destroy the person she was?

  “Some change.” I study the first picture again, looking for a hint, a sign that something in her is already breaking. There's absolutely nothing. Natalie the normal now Natalie, the, what? “How long has she been gone?” “Less than two weeks.” He's wrestling with some decision so I wait it out until he pulls out a stack of folders. “Same pattern as the others.” Four folders.

  Others? Okay, Portland's a relatively big place, but I would have heard about that many disappearances, even if Jimmy hadn't called me in. “Took a while to connect the first three,” he says, answering the question I haven't asked. “Chief wanted to keep it from the press long enough to get a handle on what we're looking at...” “And now you've got five missing. Good job, officers.” That's unfair because I know it wasn't his call and Natalie has probably gnawed at him the whole time. A cop with a conscience, how knight in shining armor can you get? “All girls?” He shakes his head and flips open the top file and all of the sudden Officer Jimmy Jacqua and his wholesome good looks get bumped to second place. A very distant second.

  Dorian Kingsley. One month short of twenty, one inch over six feet, shaggy dark hair, brown eyes, rock god sneer and, well, if this guy's dead, the world has lost a national treasure. Wow. Wow. And so...Wow. Jimmy frowns at me, flips the file closed, slides it to the bottom of the stack. Hello Captain Obvious. “Just one guy, three girls, four now with Natalie.”

  “No bodies.” He flags the waitress and waits for another refill. “Nothing. Four of them were just normal kids. Between sixteen to seventeen. Those four just recently started acting up according to their parents. Then, gone.” He waits for the obvious question but I don't even need to ask which one of the five has been a pain in the ass all his life. Nor do I have any doubt that the troublemaker has an ass to match the rest of his spectacular self. I need to find this guy and I mean need. All of the sudden I completely understand why someone goes weak and stupid over a guy. What's worse, it seems like a reasonable thing to do. My brain sneaks in a reminder that I should be careful, but the rest of me is busy ignoring that warning.r />
  Jimmy frowns. I can see he's considering calling this off, not bringing me into this after all. Is he protecting me or is it something a little more basic like jealousy? Five minutes ago I would have been flattered. Now all I care about is staying involved. If Dorian needs finding, I'm the one to do it. Oh yeah, and what's her name too. Natalie.

  I lean back and yawn and scowl at the coffee as if I couldn't care less until he relaxes and decides that everything's normal. Someone should tell Officer Jacqua that he's about as difficult to read as a New York billboard.

  He sits back now, part of the routine. Not sharing any working theories or evidence

  collected. He'll keep all that back. He's only here because he needs fresh eyes, the perspective of someone closer to the victims – if they were victims - reality. Also, the Chief would flip out if he knew Officer Jacqua was looking for answers from a civilian, a civilian with a reputation for being...difficult.

  “I think they're still around,” he confessed. That surprised me. Usually when he sends me off into the shadows, there's no presumption attached. Sometimes I find the target alive, sometimes dead. Once or twice I've led him to the killer, and too many times, the trail is cold or I don't find any connections and some kid stays in the unsolved files, maybe forever. “Drugs? Someone got them hooked and...,” and, I don't know what. I'd really like to know why he thinks they're still nearby. Does he know where? And if so, why isn't he out there, pursuing truth, justice, wait, that's Superman, not Lancelot. Doesn't matter because I know he won't say any more. The rest is on me so there's no point sitting her. It's not too late to begin kicking over rocks to see what crawls out. I pull on my jacket and cram the files under the leather before I snap it up.

  “Where do you plan on starting?” He's watching me while he leaves his usual twenty percent tip on the table for coffee that will eat holes through his stomach some night. If I were a shrink I'd say this routine is deliberate, a way to punish himself for failing to save everybody. Bad coffee as a socially acceptable substitute for self crucifixion. Hard not to feel sorry for the guy, which puts a damper on the fantasy of his bare back and my fingernails. A relationship with this guy would just be too complicated.