Friday, November 18, 2011

Violet Scars - Prologue


Prologue

             If I am to save Wendy and myself I must get to the island of the dead before midnight. Phisto, the conductor, has his cobalt eyes trained on my every movement now that I know what he wants.  I inhale deeply and sing the fifth lied in Mahler’s Ruckert lieder, “Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen,” for my third encore.  As I sing the exquisitely painful words,
            I am dead to the world's tumult,
             And I rest in a quiet realm!
             I live alone in my heaven,
             In my love and in my song!

the now familiar scent of lavender blooms and fills the packed church.  The audience seems to fall into a trance as they turn dreamily to identify the source.  They discreetly sniff themselves before they check out their neighbors. But I know the source of the heady fragrance.  And I feel that this is the last time that I can sing this piece, broken-hearted as I am.  This is a bitch, I think.  All I want to do is sing my last encore and then slip into my soft jeans and glide over the black waters of the canal that will take me to his resting place.  I want to lie on the cool earth beside his sepulcher to see if he is the man that’s been obsessing my thoughts and actions, or if it was some mad fantasy.  I move quickly after the curtain calls because I know that Phisto will be following me.  He suspects my love and my intentions.  I don’t have much time and I need him to believe that I want his insane future as much as he.  As if I think.
            “I’m wiped tonight.  I’m not up to dealing with a bunch of hysterical Italians. Please explain for me.” Then I touch the conductor’s lips so that he is not suspicious.
            “I love you.” I say and calculate how much time I have while I wait for Phisto’s response for he is always punctilious.
He pauses, such a drama queen I think impatiently, because I feel the weight of each lost second.  Then he traces my jaw and moves his hand down the curve of my neck to the top of my right breast.  His touch freezes my skin, but I miss something else, the sensation of
fire that follows.  Did he ever do that to me or did I just imagine it?
            “You were brilliant.  Your voice has grown like a mighty warrior’s prowess, now you are the most powerful weapon on the stage. It’s a battle field my dear.  Don’t let the gowns and sparkling jewels fool you.” He touches the yellow diamond necklace that he gave me, now nestled in my throat, where I feel my rapid pulse. I see that his eyes are fixed there.  He is mesmerized by the frenetic dance that he sees.
            “I’ll be refreshed and waiting for you later, love.”  I turn and look over my bare shoulder, “I’ll have my answer for you then, love.  You won’t be disappointed.”
            I turn and head towards my dressing area but see that his SNAKE waits for me.  Not tonight I think and slip into the ladies room. I’ll have to go in my concert gown.  Not exactly the comfort that I was looking for, but it will have to do.  Wendy is waiting for me outside.  We don’t have much time.  It’s almost midnight, the last half hour of November 2, the day that the Italians make pilgrimages to the Isola di San Michele where their dead are buried.
            I’ve bribed a gondolier who finally agreed, after intensive haggling, to take me to the island of the dead.  The Italians are very superstitious and no living person is allowed to step onto the island after the sun has set.
            “Affrettatevi signorina. Non possiamo ritardare. Avete il resto dei soldi?           
            I hand him the balance of the money and kick off my heels and step onto the rocking gondola. And now I will cross over to the island to view the sepulcher of the man that I love, and whom I am now sure, has returned my love.  The sky is a lush black but the wind begins to gust and a flash of lightening scars the sky the darkest violet. So he realizes that I’ve slipped away and he is angry, I think.  I shiver in the Fall Italian air and pull my hooded black velvet cape more closely to my body.  I know that I love his music and perhaps that is all of him that I will ever have. And I acknowledge that it has, in some ways, been enough.
            “Chill Wen, this was your idea.”
            “One thing in theory,” she says and huddles against me as the gondola bucks in the angry winds.”
            The gondolier begins to lose it and yammers about the weather and how we have disturbed the dead.  I hand him another 250 euros and tell him to calm down.  I barely hop off the gondola with my heels in my left hand, before he pushes off. Another flash of lightening illumines his terrified face as he makes the sign of the cross against his straining chest.  I panic then because without him we are stranded here until morning.  I reach for Wendy’s hand, it is cold and she is uncharacteristically quiet.  I can see her fear as well as her determination.  My black sequined gown glows in the eerie night shadows and I think that I must look like the bride of some demon. Better this than the bride of the other one, I think.  Wendy and I switch on our flashlights and consult the hand scrawled map that the gondolier had given me earlier.  It directs us to Luca’s grave.
            I abandon my shoes entirely and my Donna Karan stockings hold up valiantly before they tear against a stone. 
            “Ouch, this is like some bad 1930’s horror flick,” I say
            “Yes, but then we’d have a film crew and they’d have some freakin transportation back to the living.”
            “Good point.  Stop, do you smell that?
            “What are you… you mean the”
            “Yes the musky lavender scent.  He is here.  Dead nor not, he will protect us.  I’d bet my life on it.”
            “Uh, news flash, you are betting our lives on it.”
            “It’s okay, Wen. Promise.  I wouldn’t put you in danger.”
            She squeezes my hand and we follow the map with our flashlights trained in the same direction.  This is the path that will lead me to him, finally, after a year has passed and another Fall is upon us.
            “This must be it,” I say and move the flashlight to read the name on the massive ornate mausoleum.
            “There it is, Cantanta.”  Wendy screams.
            As for me, I’m filled with warmth and terror.  What if I’ve been wrong? What if he was just a brilliant composer who fed my fantasies, and somehow triggered my post-traumatic stress disorder that I’d suffered from after my parents were killed?  I pull myself together and raise my flashlight.  Someone has affixed photos of him to the sheer surface of the stone.  Those eyes, those lips.  My body feels heavy and it’s difficult to move, but perhaps it is only the weight of my longing.  Then I see something else, a bouquet of purple flowers, they are fresh so someone must have left them earlier today.  I can’t identify them but they fill me with dread and I almost drop my flashlight.
            I turn to choke down the bile in my throat when I feel him, as close to me as my skin.  My body seems to have no bones and melds in perfect symmetry with his.  His lips caress my ear and his sound is a melody that seems to interpret the jumble in my soul.  He speaks of love, but I know that doesn’t exist.  Those whom I have loved are now dead.  Only memories remain, like dried blood on a white carpet, a dark scar against a once unsullied tapestry, now ruined forever.
            “We will never be parted again.” His voice caresses my throat.
            I turn my mouth towards his lips. Since he won’t stop lying, I silence his voice.
            He takes my face between his well-formed, muscular hands and I glimpse the violet in his eyes before I close mine.  He covers my mouth with his and even though death invades our private moment, I feel as though I am no stranger here.  My mind fills with the sound of his aria, the one that now forever links us in fame’s fickle web. His arms hold my weight as I drift on the beauty that he created.  The sound and his kiss deepen until I gasp for air.  But I make no effort to retreat.  He is what I have longed for and since I can not find him in life, I will follow him through death.  
            There is not much time left and I struggle to tell him that I love him, that I have always loved him.  And I close my eyes welcoming the serenity that will follow. 
But we are torn apart and I realize, as my lungs fill with sweet air, that he is fighting for our lives.  The soft earth is covered in blood.  But I don’t want to fight anymore.  I want to follow him to a world beyond this.  I want the calm that will silence the voices and the loss. I want to make sure that Wendy is safe and then, I want to go home.


Saturday, October 29, 2011

Zombies' Revenge - All Hallow's Eve Debacle

They wanted revenge.  They came to destroy.  They had died young and the night would not pass without them exacting a price.  The Harvest Moon hung low on the horizon.  It would not rise in the sky, just as they would not return to the ground that suffocated them, until they carried the body of the one who had killed them.

This is a night of chaos.  This is a night of balance.  Sleep well in your beds and munch your colorful candies but if you have not received expiation for your sins, be watchful - do not sleep - or they will possess your body.  Your soul will wander through the dusts of eternity seeking shelter - which will not be found.

Storm Rider had killed thousands of God's creatures.  He was unrepentant and walked the earth still - an avenging spirit without mercy or reason.  He had tricked my friend and client so that she gave him her body and her love.  When she realized that he was a member of the undead, that he wanted to sustain his lifeless vessel with her blood, she'd turned to me for help.  My love, Cairn, understood one such as he. They were powerful and vicious adversaries, equally matched. Storm Rider travels the earth still.  Everyone is a potential victim - each soul is at risk.  Until they decided to stop him. And Hallow's Eve was the only night when the fragile veil that separated the two worlds would briefly open and the living and the dead were free to communicate or destroy.

They passed in whirling flashes during the day. Storm's speed was unsurpassed but his self-absorption was legendary, so he easily forgot the strange phenomenon, until they clustered at dusk, on the wind ridden moor, where he sought his nightly prey.  Their numbers were astonishing;  their eyes vengeful hells; as they walked as one towards him.

He laughed into the wind. Storm's chiseled muscles flexed in anticipation of the first contact.  His black hair whipped in a dark cloud around his craggy face.  White teeth, like ghosts, crowded in his mouth - and he lashed at them with a strike of lightening and laughter that chilled mortal men.  Still they advanced with open mouths and hands curled like claws.

Lightening scarred their ashen faces, and the fierce winds slowed their pace, but they were relentless and advanced still, towards their killer, for tonight, the killer was the prey.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Dead Redheads and Human Hearts



     What had been a vibrant, young woman that morning, was soon a mass of gristle, carved bone and liquidated organs.  I ran the water to slough the remaining blood, liquids and smaller bits down the drain.  Curiosity led me to save her heart for last.  It was a curious thing, the heart.  It caused so much suffering for humans.  I’d always wanted to taste the heart’s forbidden fruits, and wondered if in so doing, I’d share some of the humans’ heart driven experiences.  For fun.  For a change.  I snipped a piece of her heart and bought it to my mouth.  Nothing had passed through my lips for the past five hundred years other than blood and the most exquisite alcohol. 
            It was chewy, not altogether an unpleasant texture.  And then I had to steady myself against the wall, for I was filled with a euphoric sense of wellbeing and a power that surpassed even my supernatural abilities.  I’d heard humans talk about heroine.  I imagined that I experienced similar sensations to that.  I felt the theatre rumble as the storm surged in response to my experience with the redhead’s heart.  And I took another snip and savored that bite more than the first.  I slid to the bathroom floor and grasped a handful of her hair.  I bought it to my lips and inhaled the lemon verbana fragrance.  I was hungry, perhaps hungrier than I’d ever been.  And I felt reckless.  That was not a good thing.  I fought to maintain some composure.  I had work to finish. 
            Time passed in indivisible segments, so that I could not determine which was the minute and which the hour.  But I know that I lay like that with her hair beneath my nose for a long time - perhaps an hour, maybe more. When I at last roused myself I went to my Rolex and saw that it was almost dawn.  I’d not joined Jasmine at the hospital.  But the worry and tension seemed to dwell in another universe.  I didn’t want to dispose of the rest of her heart.  But I dared not take another taste.  It was time that I’d finished the job and left. 
            I took the saw to the remains of her heart and was shocked when I felt tears in my eyes.  I ruthlessly shred the muscle and dumped the remains in the juicer.  I followed methodically with what remained.  Originally I’d thought to package her remains in the bags that I’d bought with me, and fly over the skyline, dropping plastic graves in the Hudson and East Rivers.  But the juicer seemed just the thing.  It was so much tidier.  I then flushed her juiced remains and she would ultimately join the river in her last journey. 
            My last chore was to burn her hair.  I took a match to the coppery curls and watched the flames in the bathroom sink, before I extinguished the sooty remains with water.  I did not know if my eyes stung from the smell, or from my new experience with tears.  I would not dwell on that.  It was a job well done.  I disinfected the tub, sink and toilet bowl and exited the theatre, walking into the violet dawn towards Jasmine’s apartment.



Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Vampayre Diaries

I opened the door to fiery wet darkness and stared into deep violet shadows.

"I told you that I was working tonight."  My heart went flippy dippy when I saw Luca standing there.

"I wasn't about to leave you alone in the hurricane."  Luca said.

"Yes, it's not turned out to be the drama that the 24/7 bleating heads reported." I ached to invite him in.

"Nevertheless, I didn't want you to be alone."

"It's been me and Santa for so many years now," I said and bent to stroke my Golden Shaded Persian's head.  She particularly like to be caressed between her eyes.  I guess that it was her third eye too, I mused.  I tried not to focus on Luca's height that filled the storm soaked doorway to my Riverside Drive brownstone apartment.  I wanted to kiss him in the center of the storm and to run my hands over his carved chest, and lick away every raindrop.  But I wasn't emotional.  No, not me.

I had tried to reach the reporter with whom I'd been speaking.  I supposed that was naive.  She could possibly use any portion of my story and that would bring a deluge of negative attention to the American Opera Center. Not much to tell, just two preternatural, magnificent men, oh and they were supernatural.  But I wasn't sure what kind of supernaturals that they were.  That's why I called the reporter in the first place. I'd heard about her blog about supernatural creatures in the classical music community.  At first I'd laughed.  That was before I'd experienced Phisto's focused fury, and kisses that made my head spin while my body wanted to tear at his clothes and couple on the floor.

And there was Luca.  His eyes pulled me into the shadows of silence, where I floated in a milky way of comfort.  I'd felt like I'd been kissed all over by nightshade petals, and that was before his lips touched mine.  Kissing him was like swirling in the center of a tornado.  It sucked all of my breath, but I was so intensely excited that I barely noticed.  All there was, was Luca.

Luca kissed my rain splattered face before he focused on my mouth.  The first touch was explosive. I felt as though I understood then how perfectly my woman's body was wired.  His touch shot heat through my breasts and other more intimate parts of my body.  I felt my body opening to him and wanting to merge with his.  We stood in my doorway until our clothes were wet and clung to us like film.  Luca carried me into my apartment and laid me my bed.  It was the first time that we were in my bedroom together.

I'd forgotten to close the window and the wind hissed through the screen and rain slashed across my maple floors.  I then became absorbed with Luca and wrapped in his kisses, and arms and tongue.  I didn't see Phisto's face contorted in rage as the lightening slashed across his exposed blood teeth and he howled into the thunder.

I think that I may have run even run from Luca, had I seen that.  But I heard Santa howling at the window and heard her hearty hissing.

Friday, August 26, 2011

Hurricane Irene - A Vampire's Fury

View image detailThe New York air is unnaturally subdued even as the fierce city tracks the progress of an historic storm.  I know why the storm is surging tonight poised to attack the eastern coastline.  Phisto's fury is churning, and with that the hurricane has been spawned.  I felt the man's intensity and strength in his music, as I watched his casual stance, taut with power.  His eyes tracked Jasmine's movements even as he smiled and charmed his fans, he watched her with an intense cobalt concentration.

I was chilled when I saw him focus on Luca's mystical violet eyes.  It was like a midnight storm trying to penetrate a perfect dawn.  These two men, seemingly dissimilar in every way, actually shared many traits.  They were the light and the dark that we admire in a painting, the human voice.  Without one the beauty can not exist. It is the contrast that creates the magnificence.  But it is too much for one woman to withstand.  They each fight for Jasmine's talent and her affection, though for different reasons.

Jasmine and I have not had a chance to speak at depth since the concert in Central Park.  I have many insights and some information that Cairn has shared.  Does she know that Phisto
is not as he seems and that he is more dangerous than she can imagine?  And what of Luca, does she realize that he is a Vampayre?  These are not exactly truths that she can learn at the American Opera Center.  And yet she is about to learn the visceral consequences that will accompany her choices and the freedom that she is claiming with her voice is about to be curtailed in her life, if she is not conscious.

She called in a state of agitation.  Apparently Luca has invited her to spend the pre-storm darkness with him, even as Phisto said that he expected to spend the night with her at her Riverside apartment.  For the moment she has told them that she will be fine and needs to work and study over the weekend.  But the storm is coming because one man can not accept her decision.  We are waiting tonight to see what tomorrow will bring.  In the hushed expectation someone's life is about to be changed.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Summer in Central Park - When Two Strong Men come Face to Face

It happened.  I met Luca and Phisto.  Cairn was with me, and his SPNdar (supernatural radar) was in full throttle.  Jasmine invited me to attend a performance of the American Opera Center in Central Park.  That gave me an opportunity to experience their music before I met them.  I wasn't prepared for the force that left me trembling.

The night was languid with heat and humidity.  Cairn had gone before to reserve a spot, so I was able to luxuriate next to him on my lavender sari blanket that was woven with silver threads that united the sari's rich fabric and history, in the middle of the park with a direct view of the stage.  I looked into Cairn's eyes that to me, were like the stars that created a palette above the trees.  I was home.

The orchestra tuned and I settled against the beach chairs that Cairn had bought along, determined to observe and experience everything.  The first chords from Luca's new opera encircled Central Park with a golden thread.  It felt like looking into the beloved's eyes for the first time - the recognition - the disbelief - the intense relief that he's finally come.  No, it felt like listening to the life current that  made buds blossom and the ocean tumble onto the shore.  It was the sound of life.  I turned to look at the canopy of leaves that sheltered us and I swear that I saw new shoots sprout and jump into the summer night.  I saw buds quicken and burst into flowers.  I saw life.  Cairn turned to me and drew my hand to his mouth where his lips lingered and promised more intimacy.  I didn't know who this man, this composer was, but he was a genius.  He channeled sounds from another realm.  A realm that we long to retreat to but can only visit in meditation or dreams, or  we hope, after death.  The music continued to flourish, build and release, leaving a plowed field with new seeds in its wake.  His music was about possibilities and expanse.

Phisto conducted the piece with a fury that made me feel greedy.  I wanted to grab all of the life around me and stuff into my mouth, my pores.  I wanted to roll in the grass and cover myself with life.  I wanted it all.  The next piece was from Saint Saen's Samson and Dehlilah, the Bacchanale.  It was a piece that depicted greed, a surfeit of food, music, love.  The intense and relentless swell of the music grabbed me by the throat and I wanted to shout yes to everything.  I didn't notice how Cairn watched me with amusement or how his full lips curved and his dimples flickered from the shadows of his masculine face.  I always loved music but my response to Phisto's conducting was visceral.  The air grew heavier and plump with moisture as if in response to the promise that the music held

The last strains from the concert hovered above the muted park while the audience seemed to turn within and consider their destiny.  I was surprised when Jasmine came to us and said in  a gentle voice, "Come, I want you to meet them."  Her eyes flickered to Cairn and she nodded, so we made our way through the crowd.  She moved economically and with confidence so that we made our way easily and were soon behind the stage where I saw two mythic men talking with admirers.

Luca turned first as soon as he sensed Jasmine's presence.  I was struck by his violet eyes that slashed against his rugged tanned face like an oasis in a dessert.  His dark hair hung over his forehead, slightly damp from the heat.  His eyes focused on Jasmine with such intensity that they seemed to create the impression of a universe with Jasmine at the center.  Introductions were made and I stammered something about the vivacity and ethereal quality of the piece, hoping that I didn't sound terribly gauche.  I just really wanted to kiss his hands for I felt like I was in the presence of something more fragile and beautiful than this earth can comfortably host.  His touch at first was cool, then my skin flushed where his hand had just held mine.

     "I'm glad that my music satisfied," he responded.  The words glided on a rich baritone voice that sounded like another one of his compositions.  His masculine hand was beautifully formed with long eloquent fingers and a large reassuring palm.  I sensed Cairn's immediate reaction, as though he recognized the man.  But my questions would have to wait until later.

Then we moved towards Phisto who commanded a group of admirers as a general might preside over his troops.  His height insinuated that he would dominate every situation but his confidence guaranteed it. His speech was clipped and direct with an Eastern European accent.

     "The music is only notes.  It is the conductor that gives it life, no?"

And I knew in that moment that he and Luca hated each other with the primordial hatred that cleaved heaven from earth at the beginning of time.

They were not mere men.  They were something more.  And my new friend Jasmine was at the epicenter of something that had driven their desires and fears from the beginning.









Friday, August 12, 2011

PTSD - Solitude and Sound -

I live in a world of solitude and sound, surrounded by the comfort of one and the miracle of the other.  I didn't trust human love after my parents had died.  It seemed that if they could not manage to remain to raise me, love me, that my obligations to such emotions had then been neatly severed.  Truthfully I longed to be invited into the warmth of the insular world that they inhabited but I was always an observer.  As such, I became acutely keen at discerning peoples' emotions and motivations.  I learned to mimic their behaviors that had been inspired by deep attachments.  But I held myself back from the emotions themselves.  Still I am a deeply sensitive person and needed an expressive outlet for my inner kingdom.

Music became that outlet and I served her like the most faithful initiate.  Her love was steady and strong and she always rewarded my devotion.  She took me to inner realms where the spirit soars unfettered by the body.  I was transformed in the service of music.  I sang with the passion of an abandoned lover, an embittered parent, a defeated enemy.  My voice transported me to distant lands where I was always safe because as soon the music stopped, I was able to retreat to my comfort zone.  That was before I met Luca and Phisto.  They were game changers.  I knew that I would never be the same.  Nor did I want to be.

Luca's music invaded my body and soul like a fever.  It heated my muscles and swam through my veins even after the last resonance from the last chord had echoed through the theatre and only rapt silence remained.  Luca's music soared like Puccini and haunted like Strauss.  It fit my voice more intimately than my words or speech.  For I was often awkward when I spoke of emotions, but Luca's melodies spoke for me with far more eloquence and more courage than I had yet summoned.


I sang for Phisto first when I auditioned for the American Opera Center.  But I sang for Luca when my career hung in the balance and I fought for the lead role in his long awaited new opera.  It was as though we were alone in the theatre though many came to hear my audition. Yet, I performed in the magical sphere of Luca's violet eyes and my voice responded to his presence like lightening to thunder.  I followed his lightening with the thunder of my passion.

Would they cast me, an unknown in Luca Cantanta's new opera.  It was a story from another time.  An innocent time when talent was rewarded above connections and money.  But careers were not only for the talented or corporate America wouldn't be littered with so many talented musicians, actors, writers caught in a daily soul struggle to keep the vibrant parts of themselves alive.  Save me from an enormous talent that would not find it's voice, I thought.  And I sang for all of those who could not love me and for those whom I hoped could.  I sang for Luca.    

Friday, August 5, 2011

Curb Your Enthusiasm -

Sometimes my desires crash into one another like thunder, like wind battering shutters against an old clapboard house.  I try to reconcile them with the tenacity of the blood hungry GOP, but the heart wants what it wants.  Yett the soul, too, has desires.  I struggle to extricate the small still voice of my higher self from the ego driven frenzy.  That voice, like most things worth cultivating, is elusive.  I believe that I want to hear it but I really find that I'd rather stay immersed in denial.

I've found that a person can believe the most extraordinary things about themselves and others.  For example, don't we all think that our intentions are good?  Worthy?  That is why I started to practice Reiki - a spiritually guided life energy form of healing accomplished through the laying on of hands.  One can practice this healing on themselves or others.  I have become acquainted with the gentle voice of my higher self while practicing Reiki.  But that voice tells me things that I'd rather not heed.  It tells me not to become involved with the conductor, Phisto, or the composer, Luca.  It feels like a deep knowing wisdom that gracefully rises to the surface in still waters.  But I'm in such turmoil that my emotional waters are rarely placid.

Phisto has helped me to perfect my musical interpretation, phrasing.  My voice, my instrument now seduces the music.  It scorches like fire, burns like ice.  But when I sing Luca's compositions, I need no coaching.  It feels as though I am singing my soul's melody.  I barely require coaching or study.  Luca's music is as much a part of my soul's signature as the unique sound of my voice.  His music defines my soul and through singing it, I have found myself.

Fragments of myself are irrefutably seduced by Phisto's power and wealth.  These are heady twins against the backdrop of New York's siren's call.

They are more than mortal men.  But I know that is impossible.  I think that my imagination has become inflamed. I strive to curb my enthusiasm and remain faithful to the music.  Music has saved my life.  And I know that straying from that purpose will destroy me.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Khaleesi- Which Woman Will I Choose to Be?

There are those who believe that it would be a gift to love two men.  They perceive the imperative choice as a blessing.  I can tell you that it is hell to love two men. It is a fever that ravages the body with fire and ice.  Sustaining either state for an extended period of time weakens the body and diminishes the spirit.  But I love them both and there it is.

Some women are complex, mostly all, and to varying degrees.  I have been told that I mask my authentic feelings behind a placid smile, like a Cheshire cat.  I don't believe that anyone can lose as much as I've lost without cultivating this ability.  So my emotions are difficult to ascertain when I choose to remain silent.  And when I'm not singing, silence is my preferred state.  For I have learned to listen more than I speak and to watch carefully lest another betrayal overtake me and consume the rational parts of my being.  One however hears my thoughts as music.  Luca feels and hears my energetic patterns and knows me, I think, better than I know myself.  His eyes are a home that I have never visited but of which I have often dreamed.  I am safe there and I don't want to leave.   His touch at first chills my flesh and then burns where the chill had been.  It excites me in such a way that I experience life and each sensation with heightened clarity and pleasure.  I love him with my higher self.  I love him with abandon and have fallen in love with the version of me that he reflects. I love Luca for who he is.  I feel like a priestess in a sacred temple when I see myself through his eyes.

But there is also Phisto.  He is a furnace of sexual energy and power such that I am helpless amidst the storm of his touch.  Phisto loves my talent first and looks to cultivate base urges that struggle to assert themselves.  Urges such as the desire for power, supremacy, wealth.  And the artistic world has a feeding frenzy with these urges.  After all success is to the swift, the calculating, the survivor.

I am the warrior with Phisto, fearless, strong.  Ruthless.

I am the Priestess with Luca, wise, complete.  The keeper of a sacred flame.

They each want me to choose.  And in that one decision I will clarify my life and who I choose to be.  If only each woman could live unfettered and free.  Why must I choose?  Yet a decision must be made at the Violet Hour and that will determine my soul's signature from that moment onward.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

True Blood

"Fear is insidious. It maims the soul."

"What do you fear," I asked tapping my recorder to guarantee that it had started.  "I mean you have the operatic worlds poised to open their theaters and their check books for you."

"Yes.  Performing is the act of love, self-love, selfless love, and selfish love. I've wondered often if I would have chosen this profession if my parents hadn't been so self-absorbed with their romance."

"You were destined to be a singer, a great one from what I've heard." I always wanted to sing but my vocal chords only produce rumbling gurgles that sound like I'm hungry.

"Well, I do believe that it was my destiny.  As I believe that I was destined to work with Phisto and Luca."

"Yes, what about them? They're both, well, in the words of one of my gay friends, magnificent animals.  How can you resist either?"

"Do you believe," Jasmine asked while twirling her long sheathe of coppery blonde hair, "that we have one soul partner? One above all else who completes us?"

I laughed, thinking of Cairn from whom I was separated temporarily while he continued his battle with StormRider.  "I think that there is one who is most suited to us but that we can reasonably make our home with several hearts."

"I think," she answered with music lilting in her well-modulated voice, "that there is one who completes us in human form, like God does in a spiritual one.  One who was part of our being from the beginning of time.  Finding that person can make all of the difference."

"And if you don't find them?  We rarely do."

"Then there is music.  It's the perfect amalgam of art, spirituality and truth.  It's completion.  It saved my life."

"Yes, I've heard that.  Tell me about it."

"I developed PTSD after my parents were killed and lost my voice.  I didn't even know that I'd had a gift then.  But I couldn't speak.  My grandfather, Grappa I call him, is very wise.  He took me too a famous voice teacher when I responded to his attempts to sing to me at night when the blackness fell upon me."

"Blackness?"

"You know, fear, terror, abandonment.  Grappa suffered a heart attack not long after my parents died and I stopped speaking after that.  After they'd patched him up and he'd come home, he began singing to me at night.  Apparently I responded to that and began to hum.  It was, the only way that I'd communicate for a few months."

"And so he took you to a voice teacher?  Ingenious."

"Yes, he's a remarkable man."

"You learned then that you had a voice?"

"Yes."

"What frightens you now?  You have youth, beauty, talent."

"I'm afraid of making the wrong choices.  A misstep in such a young career could finish me before I'm started.  I'm afraid that I'll never trust someone enough to love them."

"Do you trust your instincts?"

"Sometimes.  I need to become more acquainted with the still soft voice within.  I believe that is the voice of the divine."

"And your advisors?  Luca?  Phisto?"

"Ah, that is a more difficult question to answer."

"Why?"

"Have you met them?" Jasmine asked and took a sip of peppermint iced tea.

"I've not had the pleasure."

"You would be able to understand with greater clarity if you had met them.  Phisto is powerful in a way that men aren't.  He's visceral, genius and with a raw power.  Luca is mesmerizing, spiritual and he makes me want to be a better musician, a better woman."

"Do the two influences need to conflict?"

"You're a gifted journalist.  What do you think?"

"I think that one is associated with power and conquering, the other with serving the gift of music and using that almost as a healing tool."

"Oh, but you are perceptive."

"Why did you contact me Jasmine?"

"I need your help.  I've never experienced anything like this before.  They're more than men and I've wondered if they weren't perhaps supernatural.  That is how powerful and compelling that they are."

"Couldn't they just be powerfully gifted men with great sexual magnetism?  That's what I've heard."

"Perhaps I can explain it better.  Or, I could have you meet me at the theater one day.  Maybe then you will understand.  You have more experience with this than I."

"What is your truth?"  I asked.

"One's truth is as fickle as one's perception." Jasmine answered her luminous eyes alight with
amber overtones.

"We all know the truth for ourselves.  That is something you have to discover."

"I know that, through my Reiki practice.  But I often think that truth should be definitive, like blood.  You're one type or another.  It's absolute."

"True blood, you mean," I laughed.  "If truth were absolute free will would be easier to navigate.  It would mitigate the messy gray areas."

"Still, it's something to consider."

"Yes," I agreed.  "But our choices define our character and our souls.  You wouldn't want someone to take that privilege away from you."

"Privilege comes with great responsibility.  Few realize the implications.  It's something that I am just learning."

Neither of us knew how much Jasmine had to learn or how she would be tested in the ultimate battle for her soul and her career.




Saturday, July 16, 2011

Winter is Coming

It's finally happened.  The musical community has been buzzing about my blog, and Jasmine, the brilliant new soprano at the American Opera Center, has finally contacted me.  There's a lot of chatter about her career and what she will accomplish, but tonight, she is concerned only with the men who are controlling her.  The men that she loves.  Differently.  Definitively.


Luca composes as though he were transcribing music from the celestial realms.  His compositions are magical, mystical, mysterious.  He is manly. Jasmine is drawn to him like an instrument to music.  She needs his music and his love to fulfill her in the same way that the piano needs the composition.

And there is Phisto, the magnetic and fierce conductor who raises music from scratches on a page to emotions that penetrate and compel the audience.  Jasmine's response to him is visceral.

Phisto is the career.  He is the strategist and impressario who introduces the most talented artists to their future.

Luca is the art form.  He embodies how music can transport us from our worldly drudgeries, and introduce us to our soul.  He composes because that is who he is.  Luca's music interprets our yearnings, gives voice to our imaginations.  It is the substance of our dreams.

They each want to know who Jasmine will choose to be, the artist or the career woman.  They each want to know who she will love.

Jasmine knows that winter is coming.  She knows that her choice will be made at the Violet Hour.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Talent - God's Gift or Revenge

     “I will serve God because I’m talented and it is my desire to serve him.  Why can’t I also have what I want?  I want you.  Is it so extraordinary that a great talent will also benefit from some rewards?”
            “Didn’t you say that we can’t serve two masters?  Well we have several masters now and none of them it seems, are pleased.”
            “If I write for God, I will do my best work.  Through that I will be awarded the commissions and freedom to escalate your career so that we can be left in peace to marry and love each other.  I love you, Fiora.  You must know that.”
            “I do.  If only love were enough.”
            “It is.  It has to be.”
            “You can say that when I was separated from my family, my beloved sister, Lucia.  Even now we steal moments for we don’t know when we will have another one.”
            “A man has a right in this new age to create his life.  I will give them my best work and I will be rewarded.”
            “You are already writing for an inferior vocal talent.  Tell me, hasn’t that compromised your work.  How have you reworked the tessitura to accommodate a small and limited voice?”
            “Let’s leave then.  We will make our way in another city.  We will marry and offer our services as a couple to other patrons.”
            “Can we go so far that we will escape the Medici’s powerful reach?  I think not.”
            “What do you suggest, Fiora?  You see no merit in my plans.”
            “I think that we are tied to our destinies and that they are not intersecting at the moment.”
            “You can give up so easily?”
            I pulled her to me with greater strength than I’d intended and crushed her to my chest.  I felt her pliant warmth against muscles and bone that strained against my garments.  I sought her lips’ welcoming embrace and felt powerful when I held her.  I willed Fiora to feel my confidence, wanted her to know that we were destined for each other.
            I heard Signora Moretti’s strident voice slice through the peaceful night.  She wanted Fiora to join them at the dinner table and they had it seemed, a guest.  Signore Claudio Monteverdi had been invited to join their evening meal.  He was already a composer of some note and my heart was paralyzed with the fear that he would be able to provide the future for my Fiora that I had envisioned offering her.  I cursed my circumstances and railed against God who had gifted me with music my greatest joy and then my greatest torment.  
            “Tell me that you won’t engage with him.  We belong together.”
            “My patrons expect me to treat him with the honor and dignity that his station deserves.”
            “Fine, fine, wash his feet if you will, but don’t give him any hope. Promise me.”
            “I have to go my love.  Remember that I love you.”
            I watched her slender form gracefully intersect the darkness as though it was water that parted in deference to her beauty.  I stood in the night shadows long after Fiora had left me.  I watched the candlelight’s shadows creating patterns on the walls.  I waited for her to return to me.  I vowed to do whatever was necessary so that we could be together.  And I learned to hate Signore Monteverdi, for he was at her side that night and I was not.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Fame's Seduction - Power's Control



The courtyard of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi...© by leo1383
Lorenzo di Medici led us to the magnificent Cappella dei Magi, one of the crowning jewels of the palace.  For a moment I lost even the image of Fiora’s eyes.  I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the frescoes painted by Benozzo Gozzoli, one of the most gifted 'equine' Medieval painters, (and disciple of the famous Florentine painter of angels, Fra Angelico).  I began to understand how wealth and power could seduce a man.
            “I should like to have you write a Motet for my niece’s wedding. You may remember the young woman who sang for you last night.”
            My mind returned to the young woman with a protruding nose and mediocre voice at best.
            “Yes, very accomplished,” I managed.
            “We would like to cultivate her voice. It is an accomplishment when used in the right setting.  I think that you will be an admirable composer for her talent.”
            “I am honored, naturally.  And I am at your service.  May I suggest another talented singer with whom we can work?  Fiora di Moretti.  You heard her sing last night.”
            “Yes, a remarkable voice to be sure.  I should like to consider that. But this commission will feature my niece.”
            “Isn’t she the bride?”
            “Yes.”
            “Would it not be preferable for her to enjoy her wedding feast and to sing for another ceremony?”
            “I am a family man and given to indulgence.  This is her request and a small one. She wants to present it as a gift to her husband.  Romantic notion isn’t it?”
            Cesco’s words wrapped through my head.  I hadn’t even begun to ponder how I was now able to hear him.  I’d assumed that we were so well acquainted that I could imagine every word that he would utter.  But that was not the case.  His conversation resided in my head.  I’d only to look into his intense eyes to verify the messages that he sent me.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Vampayre's Dilemma

I'd written musical pieces for some of the greatest princes and politicians of our time during the past five hundred years.  Most people struggle through thousands of lifetimes in different forms with different circumstances.  We reincarnate with people from our soul groups, old lovers, parents, friends, enemies.  But we don't remember.  Awakening comes more easily to some, less so to others.  But I am an advanced spirit who has been gifted with the chance to work through my soul lessons in the same form.  Though I did not view my circumstances favorably when I awakened a Vampayre the morning after the Bonfire of Vanities that took place in Florence in the year 1497.  I'd wanted to die with my wife, Fiora, who had been killed during the frenzy.  I have since learned to live without her.  Though I have never forgotten our connection or stopped looking into strangers' eyes, hoping for a spark of recognition.

As the days passed, I lost my taste for food and most drink. I was irritable.  Soon I realized that I couldn't tolerate noise or crowds and I'd begun to wander through the forests at night, seeking solace.  I couldn't accept or forgive my mentor, Piero Cesco, who had turned me into the creature that I was becoming.  I'd felt that he had controlled my life long enough and his last controlling act had severed our relationship for many centuries.  I turned to him again when my love, Jasmine, was embroiled in my feud with the Vampire Phisto.

Learning one's life lessons while inhabiting the same human vessel has its challenges, and benefits.  Now that I have found Jasmine, I don't want to move on.  I wanted to stay and love her as I hadn't been able to during our life in the Renaissance.  And there were challenges.  Phisto wanted Jasmine as well.  And I would do anything, even imperil my soul, to protect her from that fate.

Even advanced souls have lessons and I have learned that they tend to get more difficult as we advance.  The question is can we love the divine more than we love our egos and earthly infatuations?

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Violet Destiny


           The predeterminate moment is not when one succeeds but when one fails.  That is how I was able to accept my failure with humility and love for I knew that my interpretation would determine my fate, and Jasmine’s.  So I journeyed into the shadows of the pain that wracked my soul, not pain that I felt for my fate, but for Jasmine’s. And I remained shivering there for five months as I scratched away the days and focused on bathing my disappointment in loving light.
             I continued to love Jasmine with all of my five hundred years. And I knew that even though I had failed miserably, I hadn’t failed irrevocably.  If I kept my discipline and my love alive, I could still live to hold her against my aching chest.  Her lips would open once more to welcome my caress and we would be together, I knew…if I had the patience and the discipline.
            I could not survive without human breath, but I had been trained, three-hundred years ago, to thrive on the breath of spiritual energy or prana.  It was necessary that I concentrated on love and not revenge.  Revenge shred the soul and consumed more energy than love.  And I had enough love for my angel, Jasmine.  Love is the fuel that I used to slow my heartbeat and pulse rate. That was another technique that the yogis had taught me.  So I needed very little to survive.  And I slept in a web of love for five months awakening each day only to scratch the passing of another dawn on the lid of my coffin with my nails – that is the only activity that I allowed myself. Then I returned to my somnolent state and held her image, her voice, in my heart.  The more that I loved, the more love I had.  That and patience were my weapons. As each day passed, I was closer to stockpiling a powerful arsenal that could destroy only those without love, those without grace – those such as Phisto.  

Friday, June 3, 2011

The Violet Hour Before the Beginning - Parenting Self in the Void

I hadn't learned how to parent myself.  If one has to learn, 13 is not such an advanced age. But I think that I felt as helpless then as I would have felt had I been thirty or older still.  Parenting I think is in the little things like knowing just when to go to bed.  If you're half an hour too late you feel it the next day. And if you're too early, you don't have the time that you need the night before.  It's an art form really.  That's why so few women are good mothers.  Art, like life, is in the details.  But it took me many years to learn that.

Grappa was mother, father, friend and well grandfather to me.  But after the nightmares and my loss of speech he took me to a well known voice teacher, the best really.  But she was an older woman and I grew to idolize her because she helped me to find my voice.  It's not just that she discovered that I was a singer, but she really enabled me to speak from the heart.  And for me that was singing.  Few people ever find their authentic voice, mine just happened to be through music.  The journey was long and arduous and I didn't realize the destination when we started, as if often the case.  I just felt her warmth and concern so when she taught me to breathe from my diaphragm with long deep breaths that filled my lungs, ribcage and back with air, it released some of the tension that had swollen and engorged inside.  We practiced the breathing exercises until it felt like my first language.  I learned to inhale deeply before I did anything.  So when I spoke again, it gave me time to consider my words and to choose them with greater care.

Then one day Marlena taught me to phonate or put sound to the breath.  We started with trills which was like humming on pitch.  I was amazed at how easily the trills flowed and bubbled from the reservoir of deep, rich breath that I stored in my body.  My inner world was no longer silent, it was filled with sound.  And the sound nourished me. I didn't have to ask the hard questions or wait for the even more difficult answers.  i could communicate from a much safer distance that was controlled by vibration and pitch - music.  That became my only reality.  And I was satisfied.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

The Violet Hour - Before the Beginning - Phisto

I'd spent the night with an unmemorable coloratura.  Her blood tasted like her voice, light and uninteresting.  I'd broken a cardinal rule when I compelled her from sheer boredom, to allow me to taste the thin line of blood that ran inside her thigh.  I fought my nature and sliced into the teal lined flesh with sensitivity that I did not feel. I couldn't afford to leave the silly little soprano, with the voice of a bird, scarred.   Her blood did little to excite me.  It was almost as insufferable as the antiseptic fare that I procured, through other means, from labs and hospitals.

"That was delightful my dear." I lied.  "I don't think that your talent will take you far, so I'd perfect  your other abilities.  Men can be very generous when you know how to please them in the bedroom."   I rose from the disheveled bed, gathered my few things and had closed the apartment door before a glass slammed behind me into the door's cheap wooden veneer.

I hated boredom.  It was too tedious.  I had begun to think of a little vacation or sport in a less populated area than New York.  We had auditions the next day for the new season at the American Opera Center.  Singers, singers and more singers.  Had I known that I was about to meet her, i would have spent a more comfortable night.

Jasmine was about to change everything.  I saw a way to accomplish everything that mattered   fame, power and the destruction of my bete noir - all because of one girl with a gift in her throat.

I laughed and laughed until lightening slashed the New York skyline.  I could now control the elements and that made me laugh even more.  And thunder shook the concrete that I stood upon, and rain slashed the night.



Saturday, May 28, 2011

The Violet Hour - Before the Beginning - Phisto


            I came into my physical form, five hundred years earlier as Count Ferenc Nadasdy.  I was betrothed to a rare woman, Erzsebet Bathory, who matched my tastes for cruelty and was blessed with good lineage as the cousin to the Prince of Transylvania.  The Turkish forces of the Ottoman Empire had overrun the region. They and the Austrians fought throughout my distinguished military career for the blood drenched land that was not only bloodied from battle, but from Erzsebet’s fascination with torturing young female servants and bathing in their blood.  She was later known as the Queen of Blood.  I called her companion.  Though our tale is much more complicated than that.  Much.
            
           You understand that I was accustomed to having many enemies.  I had begun to thrill with each 

additional foe and spent my life plotting how to destroy them either through a gore-heavy death or 

through political and financial ruin.  Once again, my enemies were now escalating. 

Sunday, May 22, 2011

The Violet Hour Prologue - Before the Beginning - Luca

My life had taken on a symmetrical solitary pattern that gave me peace.  That is until I began to hear her sound that caressed my senses until I was in torment.  It had a familiar quality and I thought that I was merely remembering my wife, Fiora.  But it was more than that.  Much more.

I'd grown complacent in my spiritual practice and hadn't maintained the vigilance that was prudent for a supernatural, such as I.  Even though I was half man - half angel, I'd forgotten the fires in which my supernatural form had been forged and became involved with the world.  I was a brilliant young composer at Juilliard.  It's not necessary for me to feign a false sense of humility. I'd had five hundred years to perfect my craft.  Nothing less than brilliance was acceptable.  But my spiritual practice hadn't developed with the same velocity.  I'd been celibate for the last three hundred years for I knew that intimacy would bring me to the brink of murder.  And I could no longer tolerate that.  I'd learned to survive by other means from Indian monks with whom I'd studied for two hundred years.

But my human longing had been awakened with her sound.  It snaked through my mind, my very veins with a sensuality that made me remember too much. And the remembering awakened my longing and in turn my desire.  I had to be near her.  Even though I hadn't met her yet.

When she came to Juilliard to audition, every sense, every cell was acutely attuned to her being.  And I wanted to seek her out, even as I knew that I couldn't dare to engage with her.  But I was again misguided for my inattention left her prey to the one creature whom I hated above all else.  He understood her talent and how he could use it to escalate our centuries old feud.  Phisto had also calculated how he could manipulate her talent to increase his fame.
So my effort to protect her had endangered her.  And I would do anything to protect her from one such as he, a Vampire.  Anything.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The Violet Hour Prologue - The Story Continues - Jasmine

I began to acknowledge some of Grappa's tastes and passions since we were then living together.  Basically I was something spectral casting shadows on the walls but not really interactive, so I was pretty impressionable.  My grief needed an outlet but I couldn't find a way to give voice to it. I felt like I was drifting amidst shadow figures and images of a world that no longer fit into a recognizable pattern.  I chose to leave my furniture at my parents' home and stayed in the room that Grappa had decorated for me years ago.  I floated through cool lavender colors and longed for the heat of recognition and love to warm my bones.


PTSD is how they classified my disorder, post traumatic stress syndrome.  It's one of the great conditions where time doesn't heal all wounds but you actually start to feel worse.  So after six months, when the nightmares started and I gradually stopped communicating verbally, Grappa began to get worried.  Really worried.  He was always cheerful, but I could see the strain behind the healthy rose color that stained his cheeks and offset his trim white beard.  His dimples didn't flash as often when he smiled because he smiled much less often, or at least without any real authenticity.  Grappa was a powerful man with a few boat loads of money so he started asking around for a good therapist.  He'd decided that the school counselor was less than adequate.

The first night that I awakened screaming from a classic abandonment dream, I saw his hands shake and hated myself for adding to his grief.  I had dreamed that I was in a car with my parents and that they had invited me to tour the Amalfi Coast with them.  My father was singing in his floating tenor voice and my mom was singing all of the wrong words when suddenly Dad lost control of the car.  The car began to tip over the edge of the hazardous pass when my parents disappeared and I was alone in the car as it fell over and over and over again.  All that remained was my screams, which apparently awakened Grappa.  When he asked me what had happened, I couldn't speak.  I could only shake and cry.

Desperate for a way to reach me, Grappa began to hum some melodies from operatic arias that comforted him.  I couldn't speak but I could relate to the music.  Then he'd bought me an I Pod and downloaded some of his favorite music.  I was compelled by the music of a young composer, Luca Cantanta.  Grappa told me that Luca's surname meant song, in Italian.  Something about his music seduced me musically and in other ways that were beyond my years.  I felt as though angels wings were brushing against my soul when I listened to his haunting and hypnotic melodies.

I didn't know that years later I would not only meet, but love someone like Luca.  Even though I was suffering, I was also preparing for my destiny.  I couldn't know then where it would take me.  Thank God for that.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Violet Hour - Prologue - Before the Beginning -Jasmine

It was the summer of my thirteenth year. I was staying with my grandfather, Grappa, in his hilltop home in San Rafael.  My parents were touring the Amalfi coast together.  I wasn't happy with the arrangement.  Sure, I adored my Grappa, but they were always leaving me behind.  I wanted to be included in their little secret society just once.  Especially since I was entering high school in the Fall.  I deservedly felt like I should have been granted a pass to their freakin holiday plans.  Wasn't I part of their family as well?

As the weeks passed, I'd begun to feel safe and pampered with Grappa.  His high definition blue eyes always held me in love.  I knew what I meant to him.  I just didn't know what I meant to my parents.  I always felt like I was intruding on a date that they alone had been meant to share. But Grappa had taken some time off from his Biotech company, Gene Designs, and we'd traveled to see the Hearst Castle and to Disney World.  I was spending the afternoon with my best friend when Grappa found us in the gazebo making calls on the new cell phone that he'd bought me.

"You can reach your parents anytime with this," he'd said.  And I believed him and it made me feel better.

But that was before he came to me with such sorrow weighing the blue of his eyes that they almost seemed black.  That was the day that he told me I could never reach my parents again.  Not with a cell phone, the Concorde, nothing.  They'd been killed while driving the Amalfi Coast at night.  All that I heard was that they didn't love me enough to stay, enough to invite me on their little summer fling.

I began to recede more completely into the silences that comforted me when I felt that I wasn't acknowledged by my parents.  Why did they have me anyway?  All they needed was each other.  I heard fragments of what he said and saw the strain in his eyes while he tried to control the grief that battered his soul.  I would live with him or we could move back to my parents' home together.  It would be my choice.  I chose to live with Grappa.  I didn't want to return to a home where I'd felt like some vestigial organ.  I wanted to hurt them as they'd hurt me.  So I turned away from the life that we'd had, such as it had been.  And solitude and anguish became my new home.

Paranormal Reunions - Lovers Reuniting

I tore through the awakening dawn running towards my lover.  Briefly I acknowledged that it could have been Storm who had survived the killing night.  Perhaps I was about to die.  But I had already chosen.  I would not live without Cairn.  I felt his energy flickering as I drew closer.  Then I saw him approaching, slowly but steadily.  He'd returned to me.  His immortal life had not been ended by the darker demon.

One never knows the depth of their joy until they've feared that they would never see a loved one again, and have been granted a reprieve.  I felt as though I soared as I gathered his bloodied body into my arms.

"Thank God," I choked.

He held my face in his battle roughened hands and my heart filled with intense gratitude as I beheld the green love in his eyes.  So familiar had they become to me that it seemed they were my only home.

"What of Storm?"

"He walks the earth still."

I saw the rage and frustration that played in his eyes.  I wanted to shriek my anguish even as I was grateful that Cairn at least, had survived as well.

"What happened?" I asked gently as I led him towards the cottage.

"I'd managed to overpower him as I surrounded him with images of rebirth, awakening and love. He grew weaker as I intensified my concentration.  I gripped his vicious face and held him as he struggled against the flow of my blood that sprayed into his mouth.  My blood is poisonous for a Vampire."

How had I come to this point where I was having a conversation with a Vampayre - whom I adored - about destroying a powerful and misogynistic Vampire.  It was too unreal.

"There was a shower of darkness that briefly obscured Beltaine's fire.  I thought that the light was lost.  And this smell, like rotted flesh but worse, overwhelmed me.  It stank of putrid and violent desecration of all that I'd held sacred.  I reeled from the stench even as I fought to hold Storm within my grasp. Storm bellowed like the souls of the damned and then he disappeared within the darkest shadows of the beast that had come to claim him.  It was his god, who had saved him.  God help us now."

"I have to tell Morgana that she is not yet safe."

"Don't. Don't alarm her now.  We must consider our options and call her once we have a plan. The detective is still watching over her."

"What good can a mortal man be against such paranormal evil?"

"I will find another way." Cairn said and stroked my face with his bloodied finger.  Though he was stronger and walking with more energy.  His life force was returning, as it always did when he focused on light and love.

He was home. That was all that I cared for at the moment.  Though I should not have so easily been relieved.  There were many battles yet to come and torments that my love could not quickly navigate.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Death's Passage through Night - Solstice On


I heard my mother's voice telling me that "there would be a softening in the wind." It was one of her signature expressions for when she felt that times had gotten too tough. It gave me courage for I knew that she was referring to Cairn. I had become too agitated to tune into the battle with any real clarity. So I called on my faith.

I knew that Storm had labeled the Beltaine ritual as pagan even as he sacrificed virgins and young female animals to the fierce god that he had served. Such was the path of political might. The voices that rang with the loudest condemnation were often the same ones that committed the most heinous transgressions. The rumors said that Storm was born with a terrible physical defect that a witch had caused by cursing his pregnant mother. Others said that his mother had serviced influential men in their small Roman village, and that he hated women ever after. Who knows what forms the heart of a demon to beat within flesh and blood? But demon he was. Vampire demon.

The magical fires burned like bleeding torches and surrounded the cottage in a fiery womb. I no longer feared for my safety. If Cairn were taken from me I wanted to join him and my mother in realms beyond this earthly template.

Dawn began to spread across the sky like rose petals scattered on a bridal bed.  I didn't think that I'd see any bridal bed today or any other day.  Not without my partner.  I closed my eyes to see if any of the images had cleared.  I fell to my knees when I felt Cairn's energy.  It was weakened but steady.  I felt Reiki's energetic heat leap in my hands.  I knew that he yet lived.  I ran to the window and noted that the fires were banked.  I searched the awakening distance for his form.  My vision had begun to blur when I saw a flickering movement.  I tore out of the cottage oblivious to my safety or anything other than Cairn.  Perhaps I was running to Storm's arms.  Either way, this hideous night spent at death's altar was ending.  I was ready to face the outcome.