The Dead Sexy Highlander

Chapter 10: Mark of the Beast

I listened to rain fall out the window, tossing and turning as Samael snored. It was a soft slumber he had, his chest rising and falling in his human form. He would shudder at times, his fingers flexing as if encapsulating a plucked rose, and half his face would turn bone.

"Come home, little soul," he would sometimes murmur kindly, as if gathering a bouquet of the deceased to carry them on to Heaven – or, in his case, Gan Eden. I did not know where dhamphirs went after death. Were we destined for Lucifer's Hell? Was there any way into Heaven for one half-vampire? It was said we had no souls, after all. Just crumbling to dust, I supposed.

There was a girl at the window. I startled, recognizing the pitch-black eyes and lank white hair as my doppelganger. She was finely dressed, made of mist, and smiled mischievously, full of innocence, as if she had never known pain.

I donned my slippers and gently lifted my nightshift out of the lovely blue comforter Samael had quilted, and I hastened to the window. She looked back at me, expectant, like I used to gaze at the sill of the pence candy shop papa had always taken me to on Sunday after church. Old Man Withers would give me a lolly and some chocolate, saying I needed to put some weight on my bones. Sure enough, the phantasm of my soul had a lollipop pulled from her pocket.

"I've been waiting for you, my body," she said, her voice ethereal and happy, as I opened the window.

I stared at her in bemusement. "Last time we parted ways, dearest soul, you promised to be good."

"Samael has spoiled me. He lets me roam Sheol and Gehenna, Gan Eden and Briah. I am treated like a princess in the afterlife, in return for reaping souls." She twirled some white hair around her gaunt fingers.

"So, you walk the ley lines?" I asked gently. "Does it not scare you? What does one eat when they are a soul?"

She smiled. "Manna. It tastes like the lion's mane mushrooms mama used to take us hunting for, but as sweet as spun sugar candy. 'Tis difficult to describe. Tell me, my body, is Invermoore Manor and the Sedgewood doing well? Samael tells me you have defeated our wicked family and now reign as Lady Invermoore."

"Yes, all is well." I took her hand, but it glistened like mist as it touched me, then dissipated in a sprout of fresh rain on my flesh, only to disappear and reform once leaving my outstretched, pale hand. "Tell me, are you making yourself of good use to the one who saved our life on the sacrificial bier long ago?"

She winked. "Samael is a kind master, though whenever I have tried to hug him, I cannot touch him. It is quite lonely, being a soul, you know."

"I suppose you may follow him places I cannot go, though," I admitted, a tad bit jealous. "In fact, I wonder what he is doing now."

"I can take you there." My soul suddenly summoned a shepherd's crook carved of birch, with a bright silver bell wrapped in a pink chiffon ribbon and lacings of Proto-Hebrew sigils on the bark.

"You – you think that this is okay?" I blushed.

My soul twirled, her pink dress belling out. "If I may go, one thinks thou mayst too. All one must do is step out the door. Come, fair body. You have not aged a day since seventeen."

I did, making my way on rabbit toes out the window – dhampirs were given to creeping – and entered my soul's summoning circle. It sounded like a mixture of Aramaic and Enochian, this angelic language Samael had taught her.

Suddenly, a great wind puffed my nightshift up, and I gathered the chill skirts around my waist to cover my modesty. My long white hair, waterfalling down my back, spun like a spindrift of arboreal snow.

We came to a fair, gay manor in a dark city. Elegant gardens 'neath a blood wine sky, with volcanic soil, stretched out as beautiful, intricate carvings dotted the topiary – nymphs, dakinis, nagas. I followed my flickering, laughing shepherdess of a soul down the main pathway. Only birds flew past, and the streets beyond the manor were shadowed in tall, silent buildings. Gray figures shuffled past, all indiscriminate, as if drudging on their way to work.