Evanescence 10

Chapter 10

Well shit…shit, shit, shit.
I just ran into a friggin Vampire, a real frigging vampire, in my hometown and in Dairy Queen? Of all places.
I knew here or rather Joanna-me did. Alecia…petite and cute and blonde and just as lovely as and angel ordering an extra rare burger. I’m sure she was part of a massacre that killed hundreds in a “Riot” in Birmingham.
I’ve seen her slice men open with her claws, I’ve seen her kill and I know she’s one dangerous bitch.
Okay right now there’s not a whole lot I can do with Shaun here and I’ve got to talk to Agnes and see what she knows and start getting prepared. I tangled with that thing that was going to hurt the little girl and I’m still paying for that.
Maybe I could find that FBI chick. She had to have seen the demon in that guy then.

“You’re quiet.” Shaun mentions as he’s driving me home.
“Yeah, I’m sorry it was just that crowd there and everything.”
“You looked like you knew the blonde.”
“Sort of, kind of knew her like years ago.”
“Oh, didn’t go well? You’ve been quiet since you talked to her.”
“Yeah, she’s not a real nice person. Its uhm…kind of personal” I hate not being able to lie. Yeah, I can’t actually tell a real untruth anymore. When you use the power it has karmic consequences.
We’re still quiet as Shaun pulls up at the trailer. I get out on my own and head inside. Shaun gets out and follows me up the steps. “Raine, did I do anything wrong?”
“No, oh no Shaun just it was what I said.”
“You sure you seem upset?”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s just she’s bad news okay?”
“Uhm…okay?”
“You want to come in?”
“You sure?”

Oh yeah I’m sure, the last thing I really want Shaun to do is to be cruising around town tonight with her out there not until I’ve got him protected. I’ve got to have a cross on a necklace here somewhere in my jewelry box.

Yes crosses do work; they are arcane items that draw from the built up mana that builds up in the faith of the religion. It creates a very nasty feedback field versus negative planar beings.

See there used to be magi in most of the church faiths, not many but a few the most notable being the Zorarosterian and Coptic branches of the Catholic and Christian faiths. These guys didn’t like sharing power especially with Women a hold over from sections of the Rome, it the Roman Catholic hence the whole. “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live.” Bit. Prayer in most cases is unfocused ritual majiks. But there are those with the power that hide in the auspices of temples all over the world.

Yup, I’ve been studying.

I smile at Shaun. “Yeah, I’m really a bit of a homebody these days anyway it just makes me feel safer to be here you never know what’s out there right?”
“Yeah I don’t blame you especially after tonight; we made quite the splash of you uhm, coming out. There’s no telling what some of the chuckleheads might think to do even if your mom’s a cop.”

Well I wasn’t thinking of the things some of the normal people might do. I just hope she doesn’t’t decide to wash down here burger with some recently graduated teens.
That they didn’t deserve.

I lead Shaun inside and lock our door as I do I push Mana into the space around the door and the frame pushing it into the intention of the door being closed it’s solid, into a locked door baring the way like it should. My power flowing into the space between like mystical caulking binding it shut.

I lead Shaun down the hall to the living room. “You want something to drink?” I ask him.
“What’re you having?”
“Coco, I was thinking.”
“Sounds good.”

I make us a pot of it on the stove, I use water to mix the sugar and cocoa first and then add it to a small soup pot on top of the stove and then I add in carnation canned milk and then whisk it all together. It’s probably closer to hot chocolate but its how my mom makes it a little heavy on the cocoa and light on the sugar but kind of creamy from the canned milk.

Shaun’s flipping through the TV channels until we end up watching Dr. Who with the skinny new guy on it. I’m not so sure I like him as much as the last guy but I don’t really follow the series much. But I liked the Torchwood crossover. Jack is kind of hot and sexy.
We watch a few things and we kind of end up dozing together on the couch.

It feels nice to be spooned and held with Shaun’s arms around me and just watching TV and junk. I like this, I like the way this makes me feel as a girl and as a woman. Safe, safe from all that pressure of being the Evanescence.

It was even nicer waking when I feel Mom’s presence at the door her mana reacting to my shield on the door. I pop it and let her in, she doesn’t notice it at all and I refocus my energies and reseal the door.

Mom comes into the kitchen and does a big inhale and a smile and takes down a mug and pours herself a coco. “I thought you two were going out?”
“We did, we just thought it’d be better just hanging out here than just cruising around.”
“I’m sure.” She says giving me this slight smile like we were up to something.
“No…we, have been…it’s just cuddling, watching TV.”
I case anyone was wondering Shaun took this opportunity to let out a bit of a snore.
“I believe you.” There’s this smile on her face that is kindly and warm. I smile back and slip out of his arms. I immediately feel the loss?
Who knew that being held really felt that good?
It was never that way before, when I had been boy-me and did this with the few girlfriends I had, even when I was with the few guys I was with did it feel like this. So does me being a girl make all the difference?

SHE’s in the big round chair in the corner of the living room and gives me that double finger pistol thing and grins. ~Bingo, kiddo. ~

I give her the woman patented we need to talk look and I take a blanket off the foot of the couch and cover Shaun up with it, I lightly kiss his lips then his forehead. I take his keys off of the coffee table. Mom gives me this look as I put the cups of cocoa in the sink.
“What?”
“It’s just sometimes Raine I’ve had some doubts with this whole transgendered thing you’re going through and then I see you do something like that. And I see the daughter that I’ve never really gotten to know.”
“Mom its okay it was as much a mystery to me all those years too, I had no Idea why nothing in my life fit me.”
“I know that but you’re going to go through so much and I can’t help but think this changed be easier if I had seen this sooner.”
“Mom it is the right time for this. Dad was an ass about the whole thing and as much as it fucking hurts, what he did it…this didn’t saddle you with a messed up teenager or younger. At least this way there’s no BS with school and I’m making my own money.”
She sighs, then hugs me.
“Raine, as much as I don’t get being in the wrong body honey, I’ve really grown to love my daughter. We’ve never been this close before…I haven’t felt like this since you were like seven.”
“Mom, we didn’t miss all of it. We used to fight like cats and dogs when I was just a teenager and isn’t that what happens with mothers and daughters?” I hug her some more. “Just let Shaun sleep on the couch, I’m not too keen on him driving home half asleep.”
“See that’s just what I’m talking about honey, no boy would talk like that, or even think it.”
“Yeah, I guess I really never was one.” One more hug then I head to my room and get ready for bed slipping into the bathroom. Mom has her own bathroom; we opted for that instead of the extra bedroom.
SHE is there sitting on the toilet. Tonight SHE’s dressed exactly like the vamp. “Can I guess what you want to talk to me about?”
“Good guess, so what do I do about it, her, it?”
“That’s a good question. I’m not sure.”
“You’re the Goddess, how can you not be sure.”
“I don’t get the sense of roiling darkness coming from anything in town. She might be skilled enough to shield herself but her acts would leave a stain on the weave.”
“So she hasn’t done anything horribly evil yet.”
“Yes, yet and we don’t know how old she is or who is her sire and all of those things.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need some Vampire 101 from you.”
“I can tell you what I know.”
“You don’t got all the 411 on these things?”
“Not even close, once they embrace undeath they cease any connection to me.”
“Alright shoot.”
“Okay, to get a grasp on them you have to know where they came from.”
“I’m ready.”

“The Vampires first showed up in the ageless time at the dark time when the Old Ones held dominion over all things. The Old Ones and their kind came forth out of the primordial darkness that was that was before light was kindled into this universe. They and those like the are the very essence of all negative forces in the whole of creation. One of these is what we call The Beast.”

“The Beast is the incarnation of a confluence of things, ravenous hunger, and predation in the unnatural sense of it, gluttony, lust and addictions black euphoria as well as the darkness and undeath from which it sprang.”

“It was one of the lurking terrors then, and as life began to grow it began to feed like the others and when the great battles were fought ages later once we were forged from the need of both the light and the life of everything around us. The Beast like the others was sealed away behind a great wall between all dimensions. But nothing is absolute. I this war the various Old Ones had formed their own minions and thus became many of the dark being we know of to this day. The very first Vampires were made by The Beast, given vast powers by giving to The Beast their souls. Most but not all of them were destroyed but those that remained had found within their own creation the means to propagate their own evil natures.”

“Vampires are all innate majik using beings but they cannot posses any mana, they cannot even hold it inside of them. The do not even have but the barest spark of essence left and what remains of that is bound to the undeathly energies of The Beast. They must feed off of essence completely and can only really live off the essence of living things. This is best done by blood, like that done through sacrifices. They burn through essence to keep alive and thus are supernatural predators, all the feats the do burns on their fuel limiting them in just what they can do. But, they can be very powerful…See the Beast like many of its ilk saw the end coming and in such it has engineered its own escape.”

“Every Vampire that has a creator is bound by a bit of it’s essence in it. The next one in the next generation, links to the next one and so on. This imparts a link or even a semi sort of hive mind and every time a Vampire feeds a little bit is kicked back up the food chain as it were. Old Vampires can have huge stores of essence depending on how much they feed themselves.”

I peel out of my clothes and slip into the shower. “So every single feed makes The Beast stronger?”
“Yes and its minions.”
“Lovely, then Alecia being at least two hundred years old is quite powerful and she’s likely going to have a few of her children around her as well.”
“Perhaps, it depends on her clan and her sire. While Royal or the first generation Vampires are loyal to The Beats and its designs, each generation since that is not carrying the same darkness as they do have some measure of free will. Some clans though mostly in other parts of the old world worship The Beast and there is much more traffic of energies through the links making those lines far more powerful in general.”
“Dracula.”
“Well Vlad the Impaler was actually a rogue Vampire who went insane after he had killed his sire in a fit of jealousy, She was his wife and had turned him and then the castle household and then they raided the countryside until she cheated on him with her sire I believe and he went on his rampage after killing them both and that was too huge to cover up so the facts were blurred with the popular stories.”
“Okay…”
“I’ll give you a few minutes to run through that.”

SHE leaves and I finish my shower.

I love taking a shower. I almost slip into this whole communion thing with myself. It’s a novelty for everyone but my Goth hooker self. I love the feel, the massage of it the steam and the heat. I love the way it feels to feel water flow and cascade about and over my sensitive breasts. I’ve gotten myself “off” from being really soapy and really sensitive. But it’s not just that, it’s how soft my skin is getting, it’s feeling more bottom curve, and it’s the wet weight of my hair down my back. I even love all the ritual that goes with it. Drying off with patting dry instead of rubbing, checking for unwanted and unruly hairs to get rid of…I could make a fortune or at least a good living just doing that. A burst of mana into the skin and just a tweak to the follicles and the unwanted body hair falls away painlessly. Yes. I’m cheating or I guess it’s cheating; I keep my skin clean and clear in the same way. I’ve gotten to doing these things as a matter of course.

I slip into my old oversized G&R (Guns and Roses, rock band.) T- Shirt and head into my room. SHE’s there looking 15 and in a my little pony baby T and pink panties. I look at her before I sit in front of my vanity and start to brush my hair. “Is it wrong I’m using the power to make myself prettier?”
“It’s not making you prettier Raine, you’re just able to do things some people need other things to do it with. You use Mana to do all these things, it’s your own power doing this so it’s not like you’re not doing the work for it.”
“I am?”
“Yes plus even if it’s trivial stuff it’s practice.”
“But I thought that Wiccas were all hairy armpit, PETA loving, granola munchers.”
“Some are and some are full on bloody steak metal queens. Besides, when did you become Wiccan?”
“I thought because I’m the Evanescence that I was Wiccan.”
“Humph, Raine you’re no more Wiccan than I am.”
“WTF?!?”
“I AM THE GODDESS…; I have thousands of names and at the same time none at all. There’s only a small percentage of people of any given faith, or circle or coven or gathering that really gets that. It’s just like there are different parts of you that are of different faiths and majikal traditions.”
“But I thought that you were part of the Whole Evanescence thing?”
“I am.”
There’s a golden light around her and I’m seeing for a moment Mary…mother of Jesus, wife of Joseph, shining before me…Then Mary Magdalene …
My Spaniard freaks and almost has me dropping a knee, my slave has a different view of these Loa women.
It takes me a few moments to find my voice. “You are, You were…?”
“I was both women in that set of religions, but they were their own women too.”
I said something as smart as “Huh?”
“It’s simple Raine. I am the deity if you want to use that word, I am every woman, I am just a woman.”
“There’s no such thing as just a woman.”
“Yes, there is and they surround us everyday and are my favorite kind of me there is.”
“Everyone woman is special and beautiful and amazing.”
“Raine that feminist semantics in a bad way, you can argue that everything in all of creation is special and beautiful and it’s as true as much as it doesn’t mean a damn thing. I’m talking about the simple joy of being a woman, none of the extras from society or anything…else, just to stop and just be woman without ever any other thought or pressure.”
She touches me and I’m gone in a white flash and I’m In a Hijab, my breasts are full, I’m in a walled garden, my basket is full of chickpeas and my baby is cradled in one arm as they’re nursing and my other children are playing as my husband is grinding some of our grains into flour…the smell is heady when it drifts over mixing with the smells of the garden…I’m not thinking about anything at all, I’m just content just being whoever I am, she is.
And then I’m me and the feeling of being me is almost bereaving. I’m not her, I’m not a woman like her and…and…I start to cry hard. That sense of peace was just…
“Why?!, why’d you show me that!”
“So you’d know.”
“Know what? That I’m not a real woman and as much as you’re touting being just a woman it’s something, something I’m never going to have!”
I Slap THE GODDESS in the face.
I hit her hard.
Hitting a girl, a woman…just like my dad.
I barely manage to grab the waste paper basket before hurling.
SHE rubs my back and holds my hair.
Once I’m done SHE holds my face in her hands and I look into those eyes, the eyes of women every where and when. “Raine, I promise you, I promise you this; the same as every woman no matter what kind they might be. You have the gift of free will and If you want it bad enough, fight for it hard enough, love enough I promise this is a feeling that all women can share.”
“But I’m not a real woman.”
“You are, as is every single t-girl no matter what they look like or have to live. You know there are balances even to that hurt, to that obstacle.”
“Yeah, I can pee standing up. Effing yay.”

“No silly girl, its heart. You girls are special to me because of your hearts. You treasure sometimes the smallest little thing that most genetic girls just ignore or squander. It’s a wonderful gift that they’ll never have. This whole completely different yet wholeheartedly female perspective of seeing the universe.”

“Really?”
“Yes really.”
“ ‘kay”

SHE helps me into bed and slides in with me, holds me and right now it’s all I want with the world. I should do something about the Vampire though.
“Shush, tomorrow has enough time to worry over her. It’s getting close to dawn; she’ll be heading to her coffin soon.”
“ ‘Kay.”
I cuddle into her and the pillows and drift off to sleep.

***
Alecia…

I don’t stay at Dairy Queen too long. Running into whoever she was really unnerved me. I get everything to go. I leave as quickly as I can and head for my car. One of the teen/twenty somethings saunters over and…I can smell him from here. Athlete muscled, tallish, cute and full of pheromones.
“Hey, beautiful where you going?”
“Work, and I’m late.”
“I’m Jim; I’ve never seen you around here before. I’d know.”
“You would, would you?”
“Uhm yeah I’m pretty sure me and you would’ve like already hooked up if we had.”
“Yeah okay whatever, I’m sorry Jim but I have to go.”
“You aren’t working, you dressed like that and it being this late.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” I turn and look at him pissed once I get to my cat door and start to fiddle with the lock. He mistakes it for the wrong kind of fear. I might…I might hurt him, kill him, drink that sweet, salty…better than a shake, oh he might have had a shake, he might have had bacon…all those flavours of what he just had flowing through those juicy young… he grabs me and spins me around.
“Yeah, you snooty stuck up cunt, I’m calling you a…”
I’m desperate and punch him hard enough to break a few ribs. He goes down and tears part of my dress away…”You…You fucking freak!” He’s rolling on the ground in the parking lot and more are coming out of Dairy Queen. Great my cover’s blown to shit and I don’t have a lot of time now to get home and pack…
“You fucking freak! you’re a dude like that fucking freak Raine ain’t you, I seen you two talking! Fucking faggot!”
Whoa…
That girl who knew me wasn’t a girl?
It all kind of shocks me out of my bloodlust and I hop into my Hyundai and take off and head to work.
I speed on the way there and get to The Shady Rest early…By that time the shakes have started and I’m having PTSD flashbacks. I wanted to kill him and feast so badly, I was jonesing so bad for some human red. Like an addict…and that brought stuff back from being captured. Staved until I wasn’t rational and tossed a methe head so wired he would be barely human anymore…the drugs so thick in his blood the effected me so much.
I cry laying acrossed the seats.
I freak out and scream in inhuman rage setting off the car alarms beside me.
That just tops the whole night.
More tears these of just plain frustration.
I get a hold of myself.
Hint for the new Vampire, we cry bloody tears. Invest in baby wipes.
I clean up before heading inside as I do I repeat my mantra over and over thinking of that kids blood and trying to revolt myself.
“You are what you eat.”
“You are what you eat.”
“You are what you eat.”
It takes a few more mantras before I’m sort of right in the head and the idea of drinking that idiot is kind of revolting now.
I grab my burger and take a bite out of it. And chew and chew…then smile as I talk around my third bite. “Moo.”