Moon Rise Ch. 03

The envelope was sitting on my front porch when I made it home. It hadn't been mailed; there was no postage or address on it. Only my name. I hesitated to open it... who the hell would just drop anything on my stoop rather than giving to me face to face or mailing it.. it was odd.

But curiosity was never something I was good at ignoring. My theory was always that curiosity may have killed the cat... but satisfaction brought it back. Carefully, I opened the large brown document envelope, holding my breath a bit. I mean, I am sure there wasn't anthrax or anything in it, but it just... I don't know. It gave me the creeps. When I finally upended the contents onto my dining room table, I realized I had a very good reason to be concerned.

Photographs spread before me... photos of the night before... of me and Keith at the Widow's Nest, talking, smiling, my hand lightly on his wrist as I spoke to him, my eyes on his. Other photos of us, when the band was on. And it was this that made me examine a little closer. My expression was rapt, and completely focused on the stage, spellbound. But Keith's... he looked interested, but vaguely bored.

"What the hell..." I murmured, picking this image up, and looking more closely. How could he have been immune to that, when I wasn't? And I was no young pup of a Crypti, either, regardless of how I presented myself. Sure, I appeared only about thirty-ish. I spoke in modern slang, with many a youthful colloquialism, and I may well have been the youngest daughter of my oh-so powerful mother. But I wasn't a newbie. I was well over three centuries old, and I wasn't a light-weight a far as abilities were concerned. I mean... I wasn't as strong as I could be, feeding more often, and choosing more powerful partners that I could drain more deeply, but... still, I wasn't weak. So, how the hell was this human able to...

Something in a profile shot of him made me squint and I ran to my desk and yanked open a drawer. After fumbling around in the disorganized contents, I finally found what I was looking for... a pair of over the counter reading glasses that I used when working on detailed art pieces where I needed to see super-fine detail and color and even my preternatural eyesight didn't allow enough constant definition even I needed an assist. I took them and held the lens over the image, magnifying Keith's ear. And there, barely visible, was a tiny, pale device. Some sort of earplug or earphone device?

I slammed down into my desk chair, hands shaking. My head was reeling. He'd not been bothered by the band because he'd been blocking the noise, maybe even listening to someone else... someone with the camera? Great Goddess, had I been set up?

I got back up and made a shuddering path back to the dining room table and looked over the rest of the documents. Pictures of us laughing, dancing, drinking... Leaving together. Walking into my little two bedroom house. Damning pictures... in short, evidence. Things that could not be denied that I had not only met, known and potentially slept with this man, but that I had been the last one to see him alive.

The sense of dread that filled me was tangible. And I hated that my first instinct was to run to my room and summon my mother. I could just hear her patronizing tone, her disappointed words mixed with her amused, mock sympathy.

"Don't do it, Moon," I said aloud to myself as I sat down, shaking from head to toe. "You know what she is going to demand of you in payment for making your problems go away... go to Edom. First it will be just for wine, then for supper, then the weekend... next think you know, you'd be bunking with Trogdor the Sexinator, and she's got you fucking the Hades track and field team for the Spring Olympics while secretly getting you engaged to a nice Incubus she would love to have as a son-in-law. Or worse... What if she wanted you to marry, the crowd gasps in antici...pation and... what if she wanted you to marry up?" I gave an involuntary, full body shudder and mimicked her sex-laden bedroom rasp of a voice, all perfect pronunciation and diction: "My DARLING baby girl! Whatever would you do without a concerned, loving mother to look out for you? Have you met Harvey? Igor—but he pronounces it Eye-gore... you look so depleted, my dove... let mummy make it all better..." The retch wasn't completely involuntary, I am not gonna lie.

No... calling Queen Lily wasn't in the Cards if I wanted to keep my freedom. She knew she had made a mistake, allowing me to be raised in the middle world, even if she never let humans near me when I was young, save as a meal. I think we both knew that living in Edom robbed her of her compassion and genuine good nature eons ago. She was just lonely. And I was the last daughter she had. And this... this would be just a big enough issue to make her come to me. No. I had to figure my own way out of this.

"You had to go and waste the 80s in Vegas, didn't you, Moon?" I muttered. "And the 60s. And 70s. Damnit. If you had half a brain, you would have stopped eye fucking Jack and Norma Jean from a distance and gotten some contacts in the Regular sector. Buuuut no. Betcha Frankie would have been a good in with some of the less glitzy human sector. But nope. Had to play instead of build up a network. Auntie Arachne would roll all of her eyes at you."

I packed up the images, and slipped them into a desk drawer and raked a hand through my hair with a sigh. "I need to get my head on right. I need to..."

I needed to feed, which made me edgy and uncomfortable. With a sigh, I looked at my calendar and decided I needed to get out. To be around... anyone! Even if if wasn't safe. I just needed... human contact. To not feel whatever terror was overwhelming me.

"Fuck it," I muttered and headed for a shower and then to get dressed up and pretend I wasn't actually a dark, sadistic sex-starved succubus... by pretending to me a perfectly normal human... pretending to be a sadistic vitality-starved succubus.

Confused yet? You ain't seen nothin'...