Brimstone Blues

Chapter Seven

Taz didn’t know what she expected. Rafe owned a two-bedroom condo in a small, upscale gated private complex south of Atlanta, not too far from I-75. Matthias shut the Hummer off and touched her leg. “You don’t need to do this.”

“Yes, I do.” She worked Rafael’s ring on her right hand. He noticed she did it, but wasn’t sure if she did. It had become an ingrained tic.

Just like Rafael.

Matthias nodded, and she followed him to the front door, then took a deep breath before walking in behind him. The condo was bachelor neat. Rafe had an assistant at work, but at home he preferred to be alone. It was smaller than she imagined, with a tidy eat-in kitchen and a small great room instead of separate living and dining rooms.

One bedroom was obviously his, with a small master bath. The other bedroom was storage with a futon for the occasional guest.

She closed her eyes and reached out, trying to feel Rafe, to sense him, to see if there was any residual essence of him left in the rooms.

Nothing.

“What are we looking for?” she quietly asked.

“I need to find his paperwork.” Matthias sat at a desk in the living room and searched it. “Deeds, titles, all that. I have to process it. He preferred to keep his private paperwork here instead of at his office.”

She examined a low shelf on one side of the room, no different than any other home. A few pictures, some of Rafe and Matthias, the colors faded with age but their faces unchanged. One taken last year, according to the time-date stamp.

Rafe had a playful smile and intense blue eyes, like he was planning the next practical joke he’d play on you while you talked with him. You couldn’t not like him. He had a brooding humor unparalleled in anyone she’d ever met.

All part of his act, she now knew, his defensive barrier hiding a sensitive, intelligent soul.

She walked into Rafe’s bedroom while Matthias worked on his desk. On his dresser were assorted items—a watch, a small bowl with loose change, a couple of gas receipts. Dated two weeks ago. God, had it just been eleven days since his death?

I won’t cry…I will not cry.

On his bedside table were a few books, one on crystals, perhaps the one he’d mentioned loaning to her. Their dinner conversation replayed in her mind, when she’d asked him about his citrine ring. When she realized there was a lot more to him than met the eye.

“What does it signify?”

He shrugged, and when she released his hand she sensed his regret. “Protection. At least, that’s what the lore says. It’s always brought me good luck. It has a lot of properties, emotional and physical healing, psychic warning system. Heck, one book I’ve got says it even clears constipation.”

He smiled as she laughed. Alone like this, she knew she was privileged to see the real man, not the mask he wore for everyone else. And he was sweet.

“Remind me, I’ll loan you my book on crystals. I’ll bring it to the house next time I come down.” He paused. “When I say I don’t remember how long I’ve had it, that’s a fib. It’s over two hundred years old.” His voice was unusually quiet, sad. “I know I’m a pain in the ass but this was from the one person who could tame me. She knew she was dying. She was worried about me, what I’d do when she was gone, wanted me protected. She knew what I was immediately when we first met.”

Taz sat on his neatly made bed and picked up the book. From its well-read condition, he’d spent plenty of time paging through it. When she thumbed through the book to the page on citrine, sure enough, constipation was listed as one of the issues supposedly remedied.

Inside the bedside table she found an unopened box of condoms and a very, very old journal.

She removed the journal and stroked the cover. She couldn’t begin to guess its age and part of her was afraid to open it. From the binding it looked to be well over a hundred years old. Taz finally worked up the nerve. Tucked inside the front cover she found an old, well-worn, laminated piece of parchment, with what looked like quill pen writing.

My Dearest Rafael. I was afraid to tell you too soon for fear of your reaction. I do not wish for you to die, but to live after I go on. My spirit will always travel with you. Take this ring as a token of my love and faith and devotion to you. We always knew this day would come, although I never realized it would seem as if the years flew so quickly. I wish I could have more time with you, but please find someone else, love again. It is what I wish. One day, in spirit, we will be together again. All my love—Your Catydid.

“She died of cancer.” Matthias startled Taz. She hadn’t heard him in the doorway.

Taz closed the journal, nodding. Rafe had shown her at dinner.

“She was a beautiful woman, outside and within. Losing her nearly killed him. With—” He stopped. “It was quick when my wife died. Rafe watched Cassandra slowly waste away. At the end…”

Rafe had shown her that, too. She was wracked with pain, and Rafe released her from life the way only he could—painlessly, and with love.

Matthias’ voice sounded so low she strained to listen. “I don’t know if I could have done what he did. Everyone saw the prankster, the clown, the irrepressible flirt. He was the strongest man I’ve ever known. She didn’t want to kill herself, but he’d found the poisons she collected. He wouldn’t let her take her own life for fear of what it would to do her soul.”

“I thought you said what we are isn’t supernatural?”

“Rafael was raised Catholic,” Matthias said. “Back then, he hadn’t yet learned enough of life to realize there is more to the hereafter than the church’s opinion. At the end she begged him to let her take her life. She wasn’t religious, obviously, so she didn’t have the same reservations. She just wanted to be out of pain. He was torn because he couldn’t stand to see her suffering, and asked her if she wanted him to take her pain away. She knew what he meant and finally she agreed to let him do it. She didn’t want to at first, afraid for what it would do to him. It got to the point where she hurt so bad she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Taz thought back to the night she saved Matthias, after he nearly died from his fight with the Other. Even then, before they had an emotional connection, the feel of his lips on her wrist as she let him feed, how immediately the pain of slicing her flesh open was replaced by mind-blowing pleasure—

She shivered just thinking about it. All Rafael would have had to do was keep going, keep feeding, not stop until she was gone. She would have died painlessly. On the contrary, it would have probably felt like the best thing in the world, the best feeling in months, no doubt. To die like that, feeling pleasure in the arms of the man she loved—well, there were worse deaths.

Much worse.

“And that’s what nearly drove him crazy?” she asked.

Matthias nodded. “He took her life. She wanted it that way, and he understood it was the kindest thing. It’s not like today. We still lived in Britain then. There were no doctors or medicine. There was rum and whiskey and for those lucky ones who escaped arrest and torture as witches, herbal remedies. I got there just before she died. I had to stop him from killing himself. I knew from my own experience if I could get him through the first few months that he had a chance of making it.”

“There’s nothing else he could have done? Turned her or something?”

“We’ve talked about this. We’re born this way, it’s genetics. It’s not a bacteria or a virus that can be passed to others. She was human, with none of the line in her. You must have the correct genetic markers to heal from feeding.”

She wasn’t ready to ask Matthias more about his wife yet. That was one area she didn’t want to probe. It was his private pain and memories, and the woman was well over five hundred years dead, so it wasn’t like she felt jealous about it.

She caught Matthias’ smile. Dammit, she’d been broadcasting her thoughts again. She needed to get a handle on that.

“Thank you, darling.” He kissed her hand, squeezing it. “I’m finished. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Can I have a few more minutes?”

He nodded. “Take anything you want, sweetheart. I’m sure he would have approved.” He left her alone and she put the books on the bed, looking for more. She wanted to know Rafe, not through Matthias’ thoughts, but to discover him on her own. She’d only spent a few hours with him.

She tried not to think about what she did to him before he died, because even though she knew he enjoyed it, her guilt and pain still felt too fresh and sharp. But she’d loved him and he shouldn’t just fade into memory. Not that he could, the way she felt.

Walking to his closet, she spied a denim jacket hanging over the door. She took it and pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply—

There he was, in full color, standing before her on the boardwalk at Midway Geyser Basin when they first met, kissing near Old Faithful, their dinner, and later that night when she went to him…

Her tears flowed. She didn’t try to hold them back. She clutched Rafe’s jacket and rocked herself, the guilt returning. This was her fault. If she hadn’t distracted him, if her powers hadn’t taken her over and made her act like a spoiled brat, he wouldn’t have fallen under Caroline’s control and been murdered. It didn’t matter what Matthias said. She was to blame. Negligent homicide, if nothing else. Call it what she would, Rafe would still be alive if it wasn’t for what she did.

A shirt lay on the closet floor, and she picked it up. It also held his scent. She pictured his playful, sad eyes, heard his voice. She imagined the ring on her right hand grew warmer, and she frantically stroked it with her thumb. Now she knew its secret. It was a comfort, a distraction, a way to take the edge off of the emotional tension.

She found several more books, a box of old journals, and some jewelry. In his bathroom she rummaged through his medicine cabinet, found the type of deodorant he used, the shampoo, even his shaving cream. Closing her eyes, she imagined their embrace, their boardwalk kiss, and Rafe was there in her mind as he’d been in life.

I’m sorry, she thought. I’m so sorry, Rafe.

“It’s okay.”

Her eyes darted to the bedroom door. She heard Matthias in the kitchen, well over twenty feet away. Plus she had a mental barrier keeping him out of her mind for now.

The phantom voice?

It didn’t return.

When Taz returned to the living room, she noticed Matthias had taken all the pictures from the shelf and stacked them and some photo albums on the table.

“What about the rest?”

“Albert will take care of it. Things that don’t need to be kept, he’ll make sure they go to a charity. He’ll ship personal items home to Florida so I can sort them.”

“There wasn’t anything we could have done for Rafe?”

“I’m sorry, Taz. He’d been…gone for too long. I barely managed to save you, and I was right there when you were shot.”

She still held Rafe’s jacket and shirt like security blankets. “I just keep thinking if we’d been able to get to him—”

“Taz,” Matthias said, his tone firm but not unkind, “quit torturing yourself. We aren’t miracle workers. There are parents with children who need blood transfusions, and they don’t have the right blood type. Forget the movies, forget the books and TV shows. This is real life. We aren’t gods. We may be vampires, but we aren’t superbeings. We hurt, we bleed, we die, just like everyone else.” She noticed how he walked on eggshells around her when discussing the events at Yellowstone.

“No, not just like everyone else,” she whispered.

“Mostly like everyone else. We age, we get old. Look at people who aren’t like us. Two people can be the same age and one looks twenty years younger than the other based on genetics and how they lived their life. There’s nothing supernatural about that. Albert and Tim are both younger than I am, and they look older than me, looked older than Rafe.”

“What’s this door?”

“Garage. That reminds me, I’ll have to take care of that, too.” She opened the door, and there was Rafe’s Mustang. She walked around it, a red and black Mustang Shelby GT, only a few months old. They’d talked about it at dinner in Yellowstone.

Of course he had all the options.

How appropriate. Of all cars, a Mustang.

She looked around the garage and noticed the toolboxes, large Snap-on professional setups. He was a motor head.

It reminded her of when she was a little girl, the few times her father was home, spending time with him out in the garage. He’d had lots of tools, and the scent of his garage had been similar. Motor oil, solvents, transmission fluid, rubber.

She tenderly laid the jacket and shirt on the passenger seat and popped the hood, smiling as she looked. He’d modified the supercharged 5.4 V8 engine with a high-performance package that added even more horses to the already powerful pony. She was sure he’d most likely modified the rear end and trany, too. Money wouldn’t be an object, neither would voiding his factory warranty. Rafe could well afford to fix whatever he broke. It had a six-speed manual transmission, and she itched to put it through its paces.

Something else she had in common with Rafe. Matthias didn’t care to know how his cars ran fast or well, just that they did. Rafe was obviously a hands-on guy—in more ways than one. Robertson wasn’t into cars, but he’d taken the time to learn enough from her father that he could fill in while Eric was on the race circuit, teaching Taz how to change her own oil and tires. Some of her best memories were of spending time in her father’s garage either watching or helping one or both men work on the stable of classic cars.

Walking to the toolboxes, Taz looked through them, and noticed the empty packages and old parts on the workbench. Rafe had made several of the modifications himself. She studied the car. She was an old-school girl, preferred the original Mustangs to the new generation, but it was a sweet ride.

“Go ahead, Taz. Take it. I want you to have it, baby girl.”

For once, she welcomed the disembodied voice.

“I’ll drive it back.”

“What?” Matthias turned and realized she was already in the garage. He appeared in the doorway.

“I said, I’ll drive it back. I want it. Where’s his keys?”

“Taz, I don’t know if that’s—”

“Matthias.” Her tone was don’t-fuck-with-me firm. “Where are his keys?”

It was easier to give in. “I’ll get them. Let’s load these other things in the trunk.”

Matthias handed her the key ring, the one Rafe had in Yellowstone. She sat behind the wheel and adjusted the seat and mirrors. His MP3 player was hooked to the stereo. Closing her eyes she almost heard Rafe’s laughter in her mind. She conjured his scent, but for once she didn’t feel like tears.

Taz felt like driving.

She caressed the steering wheel. Even though she’d never been in this car before, it felt like she’d spent hours driving it. Matthias popped the garage door, and she spied Rafe’s sunglasses on the dash. With trembling hands she slipped them on. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The car fired off immediately, throbbing around her. As if slipping into a dream, she slung her left arm over the wheel and smoothly shifted to reverse without having to look at the shift pattern. She backed out of the garage and impatiently waited for Matthias to lock the condo and get in the Hummer. The road lay before them, and Taz knew exactly how much pressure she needed on the modified clutch, the exact timing for each shift, as if the car was an extension of her.

Rafe had left enough gas to get them to Perry, by her best guess. With Matthias following, she opened it up on I-75 and turned the MP3 player on.

Last played—Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album. One of her favorites. The volume turned up loud.

The track “Heaven Can Wait” played. She shivered but didn’t change it, let it play out.

She turned it up even louder and pushed the accelerator to the floor. Behind her, Matthias eventually stopped trying to keep up. After a while she tuned everything out including the music, lost in her memories. She didn’t want to forget Rafe. She owed him that much. In fact, if she thought about it hard enough, she could hear him, his voice instead of her own speaking to her in her mind…

Taz had filled the gas tank and ordered an appetizer at Ruby Tuesday when Matthias finally caught up with her.

“Darling, do you think you could slow it down just a tad?”

“Why?”

He realized she was serious. “Because you don’t want to get a ticket.”

She glared at him. “Matts, you worry too much. Like I get tickets. When was the last time I got a ticket, big guy? That would be…never.”

Matthias started to protest when common sense got the better of him. There was something there, behind the firm barrier she’d erected. He didn’t dare probe to find out what. Hopefully it was just stress. She was upset, but she was dealing.

Let her deal in her own way.

“Taz, promise me you’ll be careful.”

She nodded without looking up from the menu. “Don’t worry, I won’t splatter myself between here and Gainesville, Matts.” There was something odd about her voice, the inflection. The tone.

The waitress arrived with their appetizer, a plate of Thai Phoon shrimp. Matthias swallowed, hard. He admitted he didn’t know much about Taz’s dining habits, but this was too freaky.

It was Rafael’s favorite appetizer.

“Taz—” Then it finally hit him. “What did you call me?”

She was already munching on a shrimp. “Matts, what’s the prob?”

He eyed her carefully. Rafael was the only one who ever called him that. “Are you all right?”

“Great googly, you gonna eat or stare?” Another shrimp down the hatch. Rafael ate the hottest of foods without flinching. Not that these were thermonuclear, but they were on the spicy side.

Matthias felt a chill. Again, that was Rafe. Not his voice or face, but his words, his exact inflection. “Taz—”

“Matthias, are you all right?” Taz stared at him over the table, concerned. “You look like you don’t feel good.”

Something had shifted, released. Even the air felt different. Matthias shook his head and grabbed a shrimp. “I’m okay. Just tired and stressed, I’m sure.”

She bit into another shrimp and immediately spit it out. “Oh, Christ, these things are spicy! I’m sorry, I can’t eat this.”

She’d already munched two without batting an eye.

She must have really zoned out. That happened from time to time when she drove. Only it usually happened while on the road, highway hypnosis. She never totally zoned out through a gas stop and came back from la-la land in a restaurant. She remembered it, but it was like she sleepwalked through it. Matthias had a weird look on his face and…

“Matthias, are you all right? You don’t look like you feel good.” Son of a bitch! These shrimp were fucking hot. How had she missed that? She’d ordered that? She never did spicy.

“Oh, Christ, these things are spicy! I’m sorry. I can’t eat this.”

Matthias nodded, still looking…weird. Then again, she honestly didn’t have a lot of experience with him outside of the office. So he boinked her silly and dragged her from Florida to Yellowstone and back—

Okay, that wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry I’m snarky. I just want to get home.”

He nodded. “You’re all right?”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. But you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Her taillights disappeared ahead of him. They’d prearranged their next gas stop and she promised to wait. Matthias called Tim Robertson.

“Tim, can I ask you an odd question?”

“Sure.”

“Does Taz eat spicy food?”

Tim laughed. “My Taz? If we were scared of garlic, then she’d be petrified of pepper. The girl won’t touch a pepper mill if you paid her. I always had to make chili in batches, hers before I added spices, then the rest. She likes horseradish though, and garlic. Onions, sweet peppers. Fresh wasabi and ginger. Spicy food? She won’t touch it. Never has. I could get her to happily eat liver, but she’ll run from a peppercorn steak. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. We’re about to make a dinner stop and I realized there are things I don’t know.” But he’d seen her down two of the shrimp—

Just like Rafe.

—without batting an eye.

“Well, that’s good. Where?”

“Ruby Tuesday.” Matthias knew he wouldn’t like going down this path but couldn’t stop himself.

“Oh, she loves the cheddar fries. Can’t get enough.”

“What about the Thai Phoon shrimp?”

That was definitely a laugh. Or a snort. “Not a chance, not with the sauce they use. Just the smell makes her eyes water. I don’t find them particularly spicy, but to her they might as well be Scotch bonnet peppers.”

“Okay, thanks.” Matthias ended the call, replaying the meal in his mind. He didn’t think the shrimp were overly spicy, but compared to him, Rafe had a cast-iron stomach. “Too hot” wasn’t in Rafe’s vocabulary, whether it described food, women, or cars.

If he thought about it too long, it might drive him nuts. He decided to file it away for future reference.

Taz waited for Matthias at the prearranged exit. He fueled up the Hummer, and she hugged him.

“Can we stop for the night?” she asked. “I know we’re only a couple hours away, but I’m wiped.”

“Absolutely.”

They checked into the best-looking of the three hotels at that exit. Matthias thought Taz would want to go to bed, but after he exited the bathroom, he found her getting dressed. The room seemed filled with a strange energy.

“Let’s go,” she said. “That bar has karaoke.” She threw his shirt at him.

“I didn’t know you like to do that,” he said. Then he realized there were a lot of things he didn’t know about her. Maybe she did enjoy it.

She started out the door for the bar across the parking lot.

“Taz, wait.” He caught up with her, buttoning his shirt. “Shouldn’t we get some rest?”

“Oh, quit being so boring, Matts,” she said, walking in without him.

“‘Matts?’”

He followed her and found she’d already staked out a table close to the stage. There were maybe two dozen patrons in the bar. She grabbed a playbook and squealed. “Oh! This one!” Before Matthias could stop her, she was over by the DJ, filling out a slip.

“You gonna sing with me?” she asked upon her return.

“Why?”

“It’s a duet. I’ll need backup.”

“You’ve heard me sing, Taz. I’m not—”

“Great!” She flagged down a waitress and ordered a drink. “You getting anything, Matts?”

He shook his head. This was beyond strange. “Taz, are you feeling all right?”

She grinned and nodded. “You betcha’!” All the while rubbing the ring.

He supposed he should be grateful she was feeling better, but something odd was going on. He reached out with his mind and bumped against her thick mental barrier.

She sensed his probe and grinned. “All these drunks. Sorry, Matts, just don’t want to hear them, ya know?” Then she winked.

God, there was something familiar about that.

Before Matthias could question Taz, the DJ announced her song. She dragged Matthias on stage with her.

The DJ handed them two mics, and the song started. He recognized it immediately, it was one of Rafael’s favorites. Meat Loaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Usually Rafe charmed a lovely young thing into singing with him and then took her to bed. He didn’t care if they could sing. He picked his karaoke partners based on their physical assets.

Taz snapped with the beat and started singing, perhaps sensing Matthias wasn’t ready. He finally picked up on the second verse and they sang it more as a duet until the bridge. Then she belted out the woman’s part, her eyes burning into his, pulling him in.

Matthias didn’t know how he made it through the rest of the song. She sounded good, and the small audience, a little larger than it was when they first started, went wild at the end when she grabbed him and kissed him, stunning him with her passion and ferocity.

The waitress brought her drink, double bourbon. Taz smiled and downed it in a couple of gulps.

Holy hell, Taz never drank like that.

Did she? He thought about it. To be honest, he didn’t know. He’d have to call Tim again, but would he even know?

But…

Rafe did. Used to.

Rafe had the constitution of an experienced Irish drunk. One or two shots didn’t even give him a buzz. Combined with vampire genetics, the effect was even more dramatic. Matthias had watched him drink an entire bottle of bourbon and be white-line-walking sober within twenty minutes.

Matthias paid the tab while Taz sang a number by Pink. A sad ballad of lost love that never was.

A shiver crawled up his spine and he wondered, yet again, what was going on.

Three drinks later, Taz was laughing and leading him out of the bar, stopping in the middle of the parking lot to throw her arms up in the air and spin around, whooping with joy.

He managed to lead her back to the room. “What was that for?”

She grinned. “Just happy to be alive, Matty-boy!”

Then she collapsed.

Alarmed, Matthias dropped their room key and caught her. Fortunately he’d already unlocked the door and managed to put his foot against it and kick it open, gently laying her on the bed. He grabbed the key from where it landed and went back to Taz, grabbing her hands.

“Taz, Taz! Wake up!”

Her mental barrier was mostly down, and she felt confused, dazed. Not drunk, but…like waking from a long, deep sleep.

“Taz!” He was about to phone Tim when she finally moaned and put a hand to her head.

“I’m—what? What’s wrong?” She opened her eyes. “Matthias, what’s the matter?”

“Are you all right? You passed out.”

“I—” She tried to sit up and groaned, lay back down again. “What happened? Why does it taste like I’ve been drinking?”

“You don’t remember?”

She looked at him, her eyes wide. “What happened?”

“We just got back from karaoke. You had three double bourbons. Straight.”

“I what? I don’t drink bourbon.”

“You did just now.”

She sat up with his help. “Matthias, this isn’t funny.”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“Karaoke? I don’t do karaoke. I’ve never done karaoke.”

“Well, you sure wowed the crowd. You were fantastic.”

She looked at him like he was crazy. “What the hell is going on?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”