Haven (7) “Abigail,” he said gently to her, “I am sorry for that.” He looked at his feet for a long time, not wanting to finish. “You are right, though. I am not here to visit, but to hide for a day or two.” She turned on him again as they reached the kitchen table. “What’s going on, Seamus?” “Sit down, and I will tell you all about it.” * * * * * * * Jenny opened one eye and examined her surroundings carefully. It was daylight in the living room of the apartment. Her memories of the previous night came back to her quickly and painfully when she tried to recall what had happened the night before to bring her here. Suddenly it occurred to her that she was still in the home of the human woman, and there would be no escape before nightfall. Slowly, she became aware that until something was done about the sunlight shining in from behind the sofa on which she lay, then she was more or less pinned to the spot. She decided that she would call to the woman soon and have something down about the light. Jenny had already realized that her side had been bound up and she would not be able to examine the wound until she could sit up. At the moment, the sun prevented such action. “Hello?” she called out as loudly as she could. Her flank ached even when she inhaled, and even more so when she spoke. It was not long before the tired face of Jill Morgan appeared above Jenny. She knelt down beside her and brushed strands of blood encrusted hair from Jenny’s face. “How are you feeling this morning?” “Better. Thank you,” Jenny answered. “Could you do something about the sun, though? It hurts my eyes.” Jill stood up. “Of course.” She moved behind the couch and out of Jenny range of vision. A moment later Jenny saw the plane of light on the far wall reduce quickly down to just a deadly sliver of white. Jenny made a mental note to keep out of the ray that shone from the window to the wall. A moment later Jill returned to kneel beside her. “Any better?” Jill asked. “Much,” Jenny returned as she tried to sit up all too quickly. “Take it easy,” Jill cautioned. Jenny nodded to her and eventually made it upright. “Now,” Jill started, “I’ve got a few questions.” “And, I have no answers.” “Look, it’s not going to do any good to walk right back out there into the arms of whoever did this to you in the first place. You have to do something about it.” Jenny had a terrible urge to bare her fangs at the mayor so that she might back off from the subject. In earlier years she would have killed Jill on the spot, but she was a different person now. “What makes you think you can do anything about it?” “I’m the mayor,” Jill answered sounding rather hurt. “And that is precisely why you can do nothing for me. Your power goes only so far as the people of Haven.” “You’re not trying to tell me that an animal did this to you, are you?” Jill was becoming visibly frustrated with the girl’s attitude. “No,” Jenny told her. “I’m trying to tell you nothing of the sort. But, I am beyond your obligation of service and protection.” Jenny exhaled loudly, and tried to sit up a little. “Could you please help me to the bathroom, so I can see exactly what was done to me?” Jill stood and took hold of Jenny’s outstretched hands and helped her to her feet as gently as she could. Together the two of them stumbled from the den to the bathroom. Jenny was immediately sure that the wound she had seen on her side the previous night had not been hallucination. Pain seared through her body with frightening intensity as she tried to walk. Once the two of them had tripped their way into the bathroom, Jenny gestured for Jill to leave. Jill left the room, closing the door behind her and waiting just outside. Jenny seated herself on the rim of the bathtub and began to unravel the bandages that had been bound around her torso. When she had finished, the result was not so bad as she had thought it would be. Thankfully, the injury had healed some while she slept. The scarring around the wound showed that her view the night before had been accurate. The small stab wound had indeed grown after she had received it. Some person had found something that could very likely destroy all of her kind. She still had a great gash across her ribs, but if the rate of healing continued, then it would trouble her no more than a day or so. She carefully stood and raised her arms above her head. The wound did not reopen. All she needed now was a shower, a fresh set of clothes, and the use of Jill’s apartment until nightfall. She discarded the bandage and bloody cloth in a small waste bin by the toilet and placed the towel from her leg in the sink. After removing her jeans and the once white T-shirt from the tub, Jenny prepared for a long hot shower. It was a pleasure that she had not indulged in for a very long time. Outside the bathroom door, Jill heard the running water and moved back into her bedroom where she had been before Jenny’s awakening. The telephone still set upon the bed where she had left it. In a way, she almost felt guilty for what she had done after Jenny’s unconsciousness the previous night. However, all but the most rational part of her brain knew that her encounter with this strange woman bordered on, if not fell well within, the boundaries of the supernatural. Frank Parsons had been a long-time friend of hers, and she could have called in more than a few favors from him. As little as she could tell him about Jenny, though, would have him doing enough work to pay for them all. As a private investigator and a friend, Frank would allow her to find what she needed without raising any suspicions in the regular channels. As she dialed the number, she hoped that Frank had found something that might give her some clue as to who this woman might be. At the other end of the line she was greeted with a gruff and tired “Hello.” “Hi Frank, it’s Jill.” She tried to keep as hushed as possible. “Is my deadline up already?” The hard voice did not sound like it was joking. “I just wanted to see if you had found anything yet.” “Yeah, I’ve found out that there are a helluva lot of young blonde girls name Jenny in Haven.” “Sorry, Frank, I don’t have much more than that.” “Well, luckily, most of them don’t stick out like sore thumbs.” Frank sounded like he was smiling somewhere miles away. “So you’ve got something?” Jill asked hopefully. “Something, and from the shit you hinted at, this could be your girl. I really don’t want to go into it now, so I’m faxing it to you. And, the next time you need somebody to dig around for ghost stories, find somebody else. This shit gives me the creeps.” There was a loud click and the almost immediate buzzing of the fax machine in the other room. Jill lay back on her bed and waited for the sound of papers printing to stop. She worried that something Frank might have found could have, in some way, compromised their friendship. She hoped not. She lay there for several minutes listening to the fax machine before she realized a startling fact. The shower was no longer running. Jill sat up quickly and bolted through the hallway, past the open bathroom, and into the den where she found Jenny. Jill let out a sharp yip. Her surprise was not so much at Jenny’s being there, for she had expected that. She had also expected Jenny to be thumbing through the newly arrived papers, which she was. Though she had not expected her to be standing there stark naked, that was not the cause of her alarm. Jill’s eyes had gone immediately to the wound on Jenny’s side that was now fully half the size it had been the night before. Jill’s mind had started to rationalize the situation. Her brain told her that the injury had only appeared worse with all the blood that was involved, but she knew this was not the case. She had seen, very clearly, how bad the wound had been. She had seen the exposed ribs protruding through the marred flesh. It made this gash that Jenny now wore on her flank seem but a scratch. Aside from the injury itself, Jill had already decided that this woman was indeed the same as her savior in that blackened alley so long ago. The idea that the woman had merely maintained a pretty face over the years was clearly out of the question now that such contrary evidence had been given through Jenny’s own shameless nature. Upon viewing this creature standing bare before her, Jill had to admit that whatever Jenny happened to be, she did envy her ability to keep such a form. “Looks like someone’s been busy,” Jenny said in all too calm a tone. “What is it you are trying to prove here?” “Honestly,” Jill began, now fearful of this woman. “I don’t really know.” She gestured toward the papers, “I haven’t the slightest clue what it says.” Without reserve, Jenny handed the small stack of papers to Jill. “Take a look, then,” she said. “You’ve earned it.” Jill thumbed through the papers with more than a little interest: Police reports and mug shots. Three of each. The dates were obviously what had spooked Frank Parsons so much. He had circled them on each sheet at every appearance. When Jill compared them along with dates on the pictures, a trickle of cold sweat sliced down her spine. The earliest of the reports stretched back to 1985. That was almost sixty-five years earlier. The name given for her on the reports was Jennifer Alice Jackson. “Would you care to deny any of this?” Jill asked her. “No,” she said. “That’s me.” The calmness that the woman radiated frightened Jill to the core. “How about an explanation,” Jill ventured. “Give me an example of what you would believe, and I’ll give it a try.” Jenny smiled wickedly at Jill. “Right now it’s hard to tell what I might believe. “So, why don’t we try for the truth.” “All right,” she said. “I’m a vampire, and I’ve been around for almost one hundred and twenty years.” Jenny waited for Jill to protest to her explanation, but no argument came. “I suppose you plan to kill me now that I know. These are all murder charges.” Jill thrust the papers back to Jenny who took them gladly. “Had I wanted you dead, you would be fifteen years in the grave right now.” “I’m glad you still remember that,” Jill said quietly as she made her way around the side of the sofa to sit down. There was little use in disputing Jenny’s claim. She had already seen enough to know that it was true. “You saved my life, Mayor, and that squares us up now. However, I do need another small favor.” “Name it,” Jill said in a trance-like tone. “I can’t leave here until nightfall, and when I do, I would prefer that my clothes not be drenched in blood.” Jill gestured behind her to the hallway. “The bedroom is that way. Take what you need. You can stay here until nightfall.” * * * * * * * Nightfall came quickly to Haven. The streets’ crowds began to disperse at dusk, making way for the city’s more unnatural residents. People knew better than to stay outside their homes when the shadows came to life. Among the human population there had always been an unspoken foreboding about nights in Haven. On the outskirts of the city one of the place’s many dark citizens moved cat-like through the night. Amanda had been set free from Martin for tonight (so that he may look for Angelique, she suspected), and she had decided to have a look around the city for any of the supernatural beings it was said to contain. An older vampire that she had bumped into earlier told her that the Fae people usually skirted the city itself and clung to the forest edge, so that was where she had gone. She was having little luck finding anything aside from stray cats and raccoons, though. She was beginning to wonder if rumors about the Fae were based in any kind of fact. Eventually, she sat down and leaned against a large pine tree. She was bored. Everywhere that she had traveled in her unlife, vampires had whispered of Haven as if it were some magical place out of myth. It was clear to her now that most of them had never been here. To Amanda, it seemed like any other city that she had been with Martin. “It is not, though,” came a voice from behind her in answer to her thought. Amanda swirled from her sitting position into a cat like crouch. “Who’s there?” She wished her voice had not cracked with fear as it went echoing into the night. Never the less, she was confident in the fact that she was a creature of extraordinary ability. “Just a passerby,” said the melodic voice. Amanda could now hear that the voice was coming from the forest. “Where are you?” Amanda asked the thing. She had tried listening to the inflection in the last answer, but she was still unable to discern the thing’s sex. There was also something eerily inhuman about it. “I’m right here.” Amanda locked onto the voice’s location and finally saw a small figure standing in the darkness ahead of her. Upon seeing the person was no threat to her, Amanda stood up. The figure moved forward revealing itself as a boy that looked no more than twelve years old. “Who are you?” she asked the boy. “Most people call me Toby.” His voice retained its melodic tone, and Amanda was now absolutely sure that he was not human. “You are right about that,” Toby said, answering another unspoken thought. “One of the Fae?” “Yes, lady, one of the Fae,” he said bowing low. Then he looked at her with a very intense gaze. “And you, lady, are one of the undead.” “Is that a problem?” Amanda asked, sensing some venom in his voice at speaking the word undead. “The Fae are servants of life, all of us in one way or another. The undead mock life, and have no place interacting with it.” “Then why speak to me?” “We are all, every sentient thing, possessed with some measure of empathy. I know that you are disappointed and frustrated. It’s in my nature to be sympathetic toward that.” Toby gave her an impish grin then, breaking his mask of seriousness. “At least, that’s what I’ll say if I’m asked why I spoke with you.” “I’m guessing that you don’t share the common opinion on vampires with other Fae.” “I think you are dangerous to the human race. You all live unchecked, gathering in number, many of you killing without thinking. Worse yet you convert others without thinking. However, you have been around for eons, thus making you an inevitability of life on this planet.” Toby shrugged at her. “So, in other words, nature has not destroyed us, so you have come to tolerate us?” “Something like that.” Toby’s voice was coy, but it his many things. Amanda saw through the guise of innocence this creature wore. “We have even befriended a few of your kind.” “That’s what Martin said about Angelique,” Amanda said more to herself than to Toby.
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