Crimson Shadows Read online

  "Something wrong with the food?" Jimmy inquired at her child-sized nibbles.

  "No," Ellie said and forced herself to swallow a whole mouthful of eggs. "I'm just a little queasy."

  Okay, Ellie thought and continued to shovel food into her mouth mechanically, I have a crush on Jimmy—it's not that surprising. After all, Jimmy was very attractive in his irreverent, wild way. He'd been around thirty when he transformed, young enough to retain all his dark brown hair, lean body, and the feature that most riveted Elbe's attention—his wide- spaced, probing gray eyes lined in cobalt blue.

  And it wasn't like Ellie had grown up with him as a surrogate father in the same way Charles and Lee were. Ellie had vague memories of Jimmy living with them when she was a little girl but he'd been traveling steady for more than ten years now. Jimmy still called the beach house home, but he only stayed for two or three weeks at a time before seeking out new locales. But Ellie knew his work wasn't the only reason Jimmy stayed away. She remembered those muffled, predawn arguments between him and Mom when they thought Ellie was asleep.

  "Damn it, Maggie," Ellie remembered Jimmy pleading. "Why can't you get Baldevar out of your head? What is it with you and that piece of..."

  At that point, Meghann would always furiously remind him Ellie was sleeping and the rest of the fight would take place outside, away from Ellie's ears. But

  Ellie could surmise the outcome by Jimmy's itchy feet—Mom refused him, so Jimmy took himself away from her and painful memories. Now, when Jimmy visited, he and Mom were friendly enough but there was always an underlying tension. Usually Jimmy spent most of his time with Ellie, taking her to movies and rock clubs when she got older, teaching her how to use a camera and letting her ride the Indian.

  Sometimes Ellie had pretended Jimmy was her boyfriend on those excursions, not that he'd ever done anything remotely inappropriate, simply treating her with the same wry courtesy he used on everyone else. Those fantasies had been kid stuff, she knew. What she felt now was something different altogether—something dangerous that she had to suppress.

  "How was your trip? Where did you go?" There, that wasn't bad at all. Her voice sounded interested and intelligent. . . not at all like some horny seven- teen-year-old girl with depraved fantasies of seducing her mother's ex-boyfriend.

  "L.A.,"Jimmy said, wolfing down his omelet and home fries. "You were my inspiration this time, Ellie. I fell in love with those wonderful old houses in the Hollywood Hills."

  Fall in love with me, Ellie wanted to shout and had to remind herself again that what she wanted simply wasn't going to happen. But she could at least be friends with Jimmy. "Can I see the pictures?"

  After they ate and the dishes were stacked in the dishwasher, Jimmy and Ellie settled down on the couch. Ellie fidgeted impatiently while Jimmy rummaged around in his leather traveling bag; she could hardly wait to see his new shots. Over the past five years, Jimmy had established quite a reputation in the art world with his surreal, moody, compositions—a corsage, crumpled and abandoned beneath a harsh street light, a lonely little glow pouring from the window of an abandoned tenement, an electrical storm over an empty stadium. One of Ellie's favorite exhibits was his collection of Art Deco fringe work on buildings all but demolished by time, drugs, and crime. The brave, fanciful artwork of another time contrasting to the urban war zone surrounding it had created quite a stir when it appeared in the New Yorker a few years ago. Part of the sharp interest in Jimmy's photo essay was the way he'd used Meghann in the shot. Jimmy posed her leaning on the sagging windowsill, dressed to resemble the young girl she'd been in the forties. What made the photo so dramatic wasn't Meghann's clothes but her blurred, half visible, vampiric image. As she stared down wistfully at the crime torn street, Meghann seemed a ghost from another time gazing unhappily at the devastation of the neighborhood she'd once known. Ellie was sure Jimmy would have won a Pulitzer for the powerful, evocative composition if he hadn't refused the nomination to avoid the publicity that was anathema for a vampire.

  "Here," Jimmy said and gave Ellie a contact sheet, along with the magnifying loupe.

  "This one," Ellie said and tapped the loupe against what she considered the best of the lot "It's perfect. Call it Cul-de-Sac." The picture was angled to show a twisting, winding road leading to a spectacular white house that reigned upon a high hill in lone splendor. The slant Jimmy shot on made the house seem to tower over the viewer, the black sky and silhouettes of trees on the edge of the composition serving to emphasize the graceful charm of the 1920s style European villa. The photo, like all of Jimmy's pictures, called up immediate, powerful emotions—a yearning to possess the beautiful house, to step into that photo that seemed to capture another, more glamorous way of life.

  "Cul-de-Sac?"Jimmy said and ruffled Ellie's hair playfully, oblivious to the wave of feeling coursing through her that nearly made her feel ill. "What a coincidence—that's exactly the tide I thought of when I saw the negative."

  "Great minds think alike." Ellie tried to make the remark light but to her ears there .was something almost bruised about her voice. Casting about for a new topic of conversation, she asked, "When did you get your hair cut?"

  Jimmy smiled and patted the wild pompadour. "Like it? I was going through a vintage music store and I happened on an autographed copy of the Stray Cat's first album. I took one look at Brian Setzer and said to myself, 'Jimmy, you're getting stale. You've had long hair for almost thirty years. It's time for a change.' So I went to the nearest hair salon and showed the girl the album cover."

  "A hair salon?" Ellie repeated, dumbfounded. "But Jimmy, what about the mirrors?" There were few mirrors in their house because Mom said she despised the partial image that greeted vampires—it was one of the only things that still had the power to make her feel freakish and unnatural.

  Jimmy gave her a shy smile of pride and accomplishment. "Well, I remembered this trick Maggie and Charles taught me. The whole time the girl was washing and styling, I kept staring into the mirror and projecting the mirror image she expected to see. I had to look into her mind to see how her hands and scissors were moving over my head, the hair falling to the floor, and then I had to project her thoughts into the mirror. The haircut took about forty minutes and by the end I was exhausted. But I did a good job—no one there thought there was anything out of the ordinary about me."

  'Jimmy, that's fantastic!" Ellie watched him beam at her compliment and thought here was something on her side .. . not that she intended to make a case for her wild desire but still. No way Jimmy could have just told that story to anyone in the world but her or another vampire. Ellie was one of the few people in the world Jimmy could be himself around—surely that gave her an edge over any mortal girl he might pick up for a night or two—and stop thinking such things, Elizabeth Winslow! "And it looks wonderful."

  "You know what, though?" Ellie continued and dug into his bag. "I bet it looks even better when you put on sunglasses. Here." Ellie found his black aviator shades and slipped them over his eyes.

  'You look great, Jimmy," Ellie said, no longer feeling quite in control of herself as her hands trailed lightly down his shoulders. What in the hell was she doing? Why did she remove her hands but keep her eyes glued to his mouth? Why was she sitting here imagining what it would be like to run her fingers over that generous mouth with its lower lip that always seemed ready to curve into a smile?

  "Ellie .. ."Jimmy pulled off the sunglasses and Ellie saw his eyes were wide and uncertain as he stared at Ellie like she was someone he'd never seen before.

  Ellie couldn't bring herself to say anything, but she moved her face an imperceptible inch closer to Jimmy's, close enough now that she picked up his scent—redolent of soap and something else, something ruggedly male that made her heart start pounding while her hands suddenly turned clammy and wet.

  Ellie drew closer, entranced by Jimmy's alert, ready stare. The boys she'd dated never looked at her like this, solemn but filled with a restless, prowling ene
rgy. This was . . . this was the way a man looked when he wanted a woman!

  Yes, Jimmy did want her! Ellie felt it, felt his desire as strong as her own. Her heart leapt up inside her and she felt exhilarated and nervous and giddily triumphant when she felt his hand wrap around the back of her neck and draw her so close Ellie felt her breasts brush the cool surface of his leather vest and instinctively she parted her lips....

  Then in the next moment, Jimmy leaped off the couch and stuffed his contact sheet back into his bag with unseemly haste, staring at Ellie like she was a witch he feared might steal his soul.

  "Look, Ellie, dinner was great but I've gotta go," Jimmy said, hurriedly grabbing up his tote and heading for the door. "I'm just gonna go up to the house, got a lot of film I want to develop ..."

  The house?" Ellie had seen her mother's car when they came home. She knew Mom must have seen Daddy by now and Ellie didn't think anyone should interrupt them, especially Jimmy Delacroix.

  "No, Jimmy!" Ellie said and made a wild grab at his hand but Jimmy seemed determined to keep distance between himself and Ellie.

  "You can't go up to the house!" Ellie shouted as he walked through the front door and the near panic in her voice made him turn and stare in bafflement. "I mean, Mom's busy."

  "Well, it's a big house, Ellie. Besides, I'll be in the dark room. She has no use for that."

  "No, Jimmy, you don't understand. I mean, Mom's .... well, you see she has ... company."

  Ellie watched Jimmy's expression intently; she wanted to see if he got jealous. But Jimmy merely looked taken aback for a moment, then his eyes cleared and he laughed.

  "Well, good for Maggie," Jimmy said and shrugged. "It's about time she got her feet wet again. Don't worry about me. I won't get in the way of your mom and her 'company.' Now what's the matter?"

  "You just shouldn't go up to the house," Ellie temporized and now Jimmy came back over to her, his expression darkening and a look of suspicion entering his eyes.

  "Why not?"

  "Mom's privacy?" Ellie suggested.

  "What do you think—I'm going to barge in on her? Look, you know how sharp our hearing is. Wherever your mom and her boyfriend are, I'll stay well away from them."

  'Jimmy, no, don't go to the house!" Ellie screamed when he headed for the door again.

  "Ellie, what is the matter with you?" Jimmy demanded. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't go up there."

  Ellie sighed. She hadn't wanted to be the one to tell Jimmy this, but she couldn't see any way short of a physical force she didn't have to keep Jimmy from going up to the house. "You shouldn't go up there because . . . because you won't like Mom's company."

  "How would you know?" Jimmy asked and then his eyes narrowed with grim, nervous apprehension. "Ellie, who does Maggie have in the house?"

  "My father," Ellie shrugged helplessly.

  "Your father!" Jimmy exploded and then uttered a vile obscenity under his breath. "Jesus Christ—Simon Baldevar is back?! Fuck! Did you see him? Has he tried to hurt you? You mean to tell me your mother's alone with that monster while you've had me here? What's the matter with you?"

  "Don't you call my father a monster!" Ellie screamed back, insulted by the slur on Simon, as well as Jimmy's accusatory tone with her. "Mom's alone with him because she wants to be alone with him. She's waited all my life for him to come back."

  "No, she hasn't,"Jimmy argued, his expression one of disbelief battling with a kind of furious certainty. "How do you know Maggie's waited for him? Did she tell you that?"

  "Of course she did ..Ellie began but Jimmy, with a roar of fury that made her ears ring, stalked out of the house.

  "Sonofabitch . . . that lying little ..." Ellie heard Jimmy muttering to himself as she screamed at him to wait and struggled to catch up to him.

  "Jimmy! Jimmy, wait! Please don't go up there. Let's talk about it..."

  Jimmy turned around and said in a low, hate-filled growl unlike anything Ellie had ever heard from him before, "This has nothing to do with you. Get back in your house and stay there until I come back. Don't try to follow me. I need to speak to your mother and I don't want you there when I do it. Understand?" Jimmy didn't even wait for a reply but turned on his heel and headed for the main house.

  Ellie watched him go uncertainly. She wasn't going to try and stop him again but she didn't know if maybe she should call Mom and tell her about the storm front about to hit the house.

  What was Jimmy going to do? Tell Mom off, get in a fight with Daddy? No, Mom would stop them before they came to blows.

  Ellie shrugged and took Jimmy's advice, going into the guesthouse and shutting the door. By the time she reached Mom, Jimmy would be up there anyway. There was nothing Ellie could do now but wait for Jimmy to come back.

  Besides, Jimmy was right—this did have nothing to do with her. Ellie might not know exactly what Jimmy's rage was about but she did know it concerned events that happened before she was born.

  Not wanting to dwell on what might be going on at the main house, Ellie instead thought Jimmy had definitely tried to kiss her. Now all she had to do was think of a way to get him to try again, only this time she wouldn't let him pull away.

  Four

  As always, the name Simon Baldevar had a near magical effect on Jimmy, transforming him from a man into an unthinking lunatic who had only one objective—kill the sick sonofabitch that had ruined his life.

  Transforming me was the biggest mistake you ever made, motherfucker, Jimmy thought at his unseen enemy as he cut through the dunes to reach the house quicker. I'm not some puny mortal you can push around anymore. I'm a vampire and that means I'm finally strong enough to put you in the ground where you belong now that you've crawled out from whatever rock you've been hiding under for seventeen years.

  Why did he come back, Jimmy?a still functioning part of his mind asked. Can't you see that none of this makes any sense? Maggie's supposed to hate him for abandoning her and Ellie. What brought him back?

  Something was very wrong. First, Ellie didn't seem to hate him at all, like you'd expect someone to hate a deadbeat father. Instead, she defended the prick. And Maggie ... what about Maggie, for Christ's sake? Why would she jump into bed with someone she's supposed to despise?

  Well, Ellie had to be wrong about that, that's all there was to it. Jimmy absolutely refused to believe Maggie still had any interest in that monster. She must have lied to Ellie so the poor kid wouldn't grow up knowing what kind of evil degenerate her father was. Yes, that was it. Maggie didn't miss or love Simon Baldevar, no matter what she told Ellie. No doubt Maggie was fighting Baldevar right now, telling him to get lost. Jimmy had better hurry up so he could give Maggie whatever help she needed to get rid of him.

  "What the hell?" Jimmy said aloud as the torn remains of a pair of blue jeans rolled past his feet. Jimmy picked them up and was immediately assaulted by an obscene psychic residue that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt Ellie was not wrong about Maggie and Simon Baldevar.

  Jimmy balled up the torn jeans and strode toward Maggie's car, his expression that of an angry housewife clutching her husband's lipstick-smeared shirt. Here was the scene of the crime ... for Maggie letting that dirty bastard touch her was nothing but a crime in Jimmy's mind. Jimmy focused his eyes on the hood of the car and saw a slight imprint that would have been invisible to mortal eyes ... that of the very fine, very rounded ass his hands used to know well.

  So after all these years of treating Jimmy like some sexless neuter, Simon Baldevar had only to show up at the door and Maggie got so hot she couldn't even wait to get in the house but did him right on her fucking car! Goddamn that lying, two-faced slut and her prim- mouthed rejections to hell!

  This had nothing to do with jealousy, Jimmy told himself. He'd long ago put Maggie and her inexplicable denials behind him. What else could he do—spend eternity weeping and whining after her? No way! Fall off the horse, you get right back on and that's just what Jimmy had done. It was nothing short of amazing wh
at the Nikon did for his sex life.

  So Jimmy had made a new life for himself, though he never fell in love again, and was convinced he'd have no trouble with Maggie doing the same. As far as Jimmy was concerned, she could lay the New York Mets from the manager down to the batboy and he wouldn't blink an eye. But take up with Simon Balde- var?! Was Maggie out of her mind?

  She must be, always had been when it came to Baldevar. Maggie O'Neill, the smart, sharp, ballsy woman he knew and loved got her brains turned to jelly by that asshole. It was nothing short of amazing the way the creep brainwashed her. Whatever mind- trip Baldevar did on Maggie, he made Jim Jones and Charles Manson look like bush leaguers.

  Well, no more, Jimmy vowed and kicked open the front door, but he pulled back immediately in a combination of fright and confusion at how different the house felt. Usually the first thing Jimmy felt when he walked into the foyer was a cheerful openness embracing him, almost like a spiritual welcome mat. But that had been obliterated by a noxious, malevolent presence that made Jimmy feel insignificant and small, almost like he was standing in the presence of a god—a god that despised him and wanted to destroy him. Jimmy gulped nervously, wondering how he could have forgotten Simon Baldevar's aura—that dark, choking vibration he emitted and the way it always made Jimmy want to turn tail and run.

  No! No, Goddammit . . . not this time! Jimmy meant to finish what that bastard had started with him eighteen years ago. Jimmy moved away from the stairs and that foul presence, but this was a strategic retreat; he had to get a weapon before he attacked Baldevar.

  Jimmy hurried into the kitchen, gritting his teeth against the breathy little moans he could hear from upstairs. As he selected the longest, sharpest meat cleaver from the knife rack, Jimmy told himself Maggie's submission would work to his advantage. While

  Baldevar was busy screwing Maggie, Jimmy would sneak up on the couple and cut Baldevar's head off.