BY
BLOOD POSSESSED— Agatha Award Nominee
Author: Elena Santangelo
Reissue Edition
Trade Paperback
ISBN 1-933523-04-2
"If one Confederate soldier kills 90 Yankees, how many
Yankees can 10 Confederate soldiers kill?"
Math
problem from Johnson's Elementary Arithmetic,
published in Raleigh, North Carolina, 1864
MAY 1, 1864 -- CLARK'S MOUNTAIN, VIRGINIA
Against
the satiny ribbon of river below, bathed blood red by the setting sun,
the horse and rider appeared as little more than shadows of the lone toy
cavalryman my brother Lane let me have years before.
The rider coaxed his mount away from its refreshment
of Rapidan water, toward the sea of white, conical tents that seemed to
stretch clear back to Washington. As he cantered between the Yankee watchfires
on the far bank, their glow picked up the yellow of his sash.
An officer, maybe even a general.
I was stretched out flat, snug against the cool,
damp earth. Good Virginia clay that should have given off the heady smell
of late spring bounty. This year it reeked of sweat and urine, blood and
death. All the world did. I breathed in the stench, welcoming its reminder
of mission.
The ground itself seemed to respond, cradling
me like a familiar lover, angling my arms, bracing them, until Pa's heavy
old fowling rifle formed a true line between my eyes and that toy soldier
pausing to speak to his pickets.
Keeping his blue-coated shoulders in my sights,
I ran my palm along the gun stock, letting it warm beneath my fingers.
His horse pranced nervously, as if sensing the danger, but the rider was
too intent upon his business. I could hit him square, I knew. I'd practiced
nearly every day for two months after coming home from Richmond last fall.
Then the armies had returned, bivouacking once again on either bank of
the river, and it proved safer for me to stay huddled in the cellar until
nightfall.
My fingertips traced the rifle's contour, savoring
the grooves fancily etched into the metal by some long-dead gunsmith,
caressing the grip until my hand became one with the wood, stroking the
inner crescent of the trigger as if it were the most delicate crystal.
"Bang," I whispered, a parody of the
game played with my toy warrior long ago. "Bang. You're dead."
And I conjured up a vision of him toppling from his saddle, his foot caught
in one stirrup, the great steed rearing up in terror as foot soldiers
rushed to his aid, striving vainly to catch the wayward reins.
Across the river, the rider raised his head, scanning
warily the thick forest carpet on this arm of the mountain, assuring his
mount with a pat of his gauntlet. An emotion overtook me that moment,
strong and exhilarating. Fear had been dispatched and received. He knew
something in these woods held his doom in balance. He realized my power
over him.
When the time came to face my true nemesis, I
would desire that sensation again.
"What in blazes you doing a-way up here,
boy?" Someone dropped to the ground beside me. I couldn't see much
more of him in the fading light than an outline of rags hanging loose
from his emaciated figure, but his speech proclaimed him a fellow Virginian.
He didn't startle me--I'd already identified him as the gristled veteran
who'd taken me under his wing, who carried with him permanently the aura
of a skunk he'd had the misfortune to disturb.
"Look yonder," I said, nodding to the
opposite bank. "A general, you reckon?"
"Mebbe." He pushed my rifle barrel down.
"Ain't the time, son. No honor in it 'cept in battle."
Honor? I wanted to shout. To the devil
with "honor" and "glory" and all those high-sounding
words that send men to war. The only honor comes in admitting we're all
assassins, reveling in havoc and devastation. And always will be, until
the Final Armageddon.
But the old man was shoving his upturned hat under
my chin and a more appealing scent fought its way through the pungency
of the skunk. "Here. Blackberries. Found 'em down along that little
spring you told me about, hidden under a mess of sumac. Go on, fill yourself
up. No telling when we'll get better'n goober peas again."
I took one to roll around my tongue. Wasn't ripe,
wouldn't be for a while, which was why the animals hadn't found them yet.
But pure heaven to an army living on peanuts and wheat bran. "Any
more where these came from?"
"Whole bush, only I didn't have anything
with me 'cept my hat and pockets to carry 'em."
"Show me where. We'll fill up my pockets
too, bring them back, make up a soup so they go farther."
"Best watch out, son. They make you chief
quartermaster for notions like that." He laughed, and his nearly
toothless grin pleated the long whiskers around his mouth.
As we made our way down the gully above Long Branch,
he started in talking once more, now solemn and shrewd. "I was like
you once. We all were four years ago. Hankering to get into the fight,
itching to shoot my first Yank. Wanted a general too. Settled for a private
what should never'a left his mama's knee. Though a darn sight older'n
you, boy."
I let myself smile, knowing he couldn't see it
in the dark. I'd aged a millennium in--was it little more than two years?
But I'd never been young. Neither had this old gnarled specimen at my
side. Old, though no more than ten years my senior, looking out of eyes
that had viewed more than men thrice his age ought in one lifetime. This
was our one similarity. He'd never been like me otherwise. "The Army
of Northern Virginia can't be too particular these days," was how
I answered him.
"No, it can't. Friends I grew up with, men
I did business with, almost all dead now. Even those what survived Manassas
and Sharpsburg, I watched mowed down in that final charge on Gettysburg."
His voice caught, and I resisted a childish urge to touch him. Gettysburg
had also taken my dearest brother, Lane, but I'd not seen the carnage
firsthand like this man had.
"And now those Yankee devils won't exchange
prisoners," he continued, recovering himself. "Soon we'll be
stealing babies right out of their nurses' arms. 'Stead of walking, we'll
teach 'em to charge. 'Stead of talking, we'll learn 'em the Rebel yell.
'Stead of sucking at teats, we'll let 'em suck hardtack. Lord, they won't
ever want to go home."
"Things keep up, none of them'll have homes
anyway," I murmured.
"True enough." He stopped to clap me
on the shoulder. "Seen the way them bluecoats been a-bustling of
late? You'll get your first taste of battle right soon, son. Mebbe kill
yourself that general."
I intended to, if I could, but not the one I'd
had in my sights tonight. There was only one general worth killing, whose
death would pay for the lives of my family, the ruin of my home and land.
And before I pulled the trigger, I'd make sure he knew who dealt his fate,
and why.
CHAPTER 1
MAY 1, PRESENT-DAY -- SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA
Against mauve cubicle
walls, Herb's bald spot gleamed pale, almost jaundiced, like an old softball
left up in the attic too long.
His phone was ringing. We all knew it was his,
the ringer set louder than anyone else's. If you didn't know him, you'd
assume he wanted to be able to hear it when away from his desk, say, at
the copier. But Herb never used the copier, never left his seat except
for two daily sojourns to the little boy's room. Yet he'd always let his
phone ring three and a half times. Sat there watching it like a starved
raptor, chubby forefinger poised over the speaker button. A nanosecond
before voice mail could snatch the call away, he'd jab his talon at his
prey, intoning, "Dawkins-Greenway Corporation. Herbert J. Kruminski
speaking. How may I help you?" Every time. Even on in-house calls.
Like he was CEO or something. And because he always used his speaker,
always cranked up as loud as it would go, the rest of us got the special
treat of having to listen to both sides of every blessed conversation.
This call was from Shipping. Herb had left a bunch
of blank spaces on a customer's order change. Again.
I rested my hand on the rim of the bust-high cubicle,
palm down, thumb lined up with Herb's off-white dome of brain wrap. Slipping
one of those thick, paper-ream-sized rubber bands over the thumbnail,
I slowly eased it back, feeling the tension increase until I had to bend
my thumb knuckle against it.
"What the hell are you doing, Pat?"
The band snapped back at me, whacking the tiny
quasi-funny-bone in the soft spot below my forefinger. "Madonne!"
I jiggled my hand to relieve the pain as I turned to my cube mate, Denise-of-the-Oh-So-Perfect-Timing.
"What's it look like I'm doing? I'm wishing I had a gun."
Her attention had been fixed on an e-mail message
on her computer monitor up to that point. Now she gazed at me over her
glasses like some wise old woman. With her twenty-five-year-old baby face
and body I would have killed for a decade earlier, the look wasn't convincing.
"For Herb or me?"
"Does it matter?"
"If it's Herb, I'll dig my dad's old starter
pistol out of the basement for you."
"No thanks. If I'm going to do this disgruntled
employee thing up right, I should have an assault rifle. And I wouldn't
start with peons like you and Herb. I'd open up on Burt first. Use up
a whole ammo cartridge on him and his fancy office." Want to hear
the scary part? I wasn't kidding, folks. My imagination spent the better
part of each workday ironing out the details.
"Do me a favor," Denise said, swivelling
back to her e-mail. "The morning you reach into your closet and pull
out jungle fatigues instead of a business suit, call me so I can take
a sick day."
"Can't. They'd make you an accessory."
"In that case, I want matching fatigues.
Designer. Something showing cleavage and leg, you know?"
"We'd look like Charlie's Angels."
"Who?"
She was serious. I'd always expected a generation
gap when and if I ever had kids, but it gets you in the gut when it happens
with a co-worker. For Denise, Jaclyn Smith was simply a name on K-Mart
clothes. "Sorry. Before you were born."
"What was it like back then, living in caves?
Eating dinosaur McNuggets?"
The rubber band soared straight and true this time, halving the four inches
between Denise's screen and nose.
She didn't even flinch. "Call me crazy, but
something tells me it's a good thing it's Friday and you're on vacation
next week. Where'd you say you're going?"
"Virginia."
"What's there? A beach or something?"
Beaches are where people in our office go on vacation:
the Jersey Shore, or if you managed to save a few bucks, a coast with
white sand and water sans hospital waste. Mexico, Bermuda, the Caribbean.
If you had kids, you did Disney World. California and Hawaii were also
acceptable. Any other state drew frowns of puzzlement unless it had a
beach, famous golf course, or relatives you couldn't get out of visiting.
I hate traveling alone, so on my off-time, I usually
hole up in my apartment with take-out food and a stack of videos. The
only reason I was headed for Virginia this time was that I'd received
a bizarre letter from one Joel Peyton, Attorney-at-Law, saying a ninety-one-year-old
woman named Magnolia Shelby was leaving me her land. The catch was, I
had to go stay with her during the last week of April and first week of
May.
Since I didn't know anyone named Shelby, nor had
ever heard my parents mention the name or anyone else in Virginia, I'd
checked the letter out, phoning Mr. Peyton to ascertain the size, situation,
and certainty of the bequest. A couple hundred acres. Non-swampland, in
fact prime real estate, already surrounded by development. Peyton assured
me old Magnolia wasn't loony, either in the senile or psycho sense. She'd
written the will thirty years earlier and it'd taken that long to track
me down. He refused to discuss the Why Me? aspect of it, but he did say
this Shelby woman had no relations who'd contest her will and no intention
of changing her mind. Neither was she anywhere near her deathbed.
Still, I could put up with even this job
another ten years if the sale of two hundred acres could mean early retirement.
All I had to do, apparently, was go suck up to
the woman. What the hell?
So I'd put in for the vacation time. Burt, control-bastard
that he is, refused to let me have both weeks off. Having foreseen this
possible snag, I'd asked Mr. Peyton which days were most crucial. I put
in again, this time for April twenty-ninth through May fifth. Burt, on
one of his worst omnipotent-being jags yet, insisted he had a critical
project due the first of May, but he'd let me take the week of the fourth,
out of the decency of his heart. The project, I'd discovered yesterday,
turned out to be a simple client list. I could have run it Tuesday afternoon.
Or in the extreme unlikelihood that we signed on another client in two
days, Denise could have run the list without me.
More incentive for early retirement. Or the jungle
fatigue option. Whichever.
Luckily, Mr. Peyton had been very understanding.
But, for obvious reasons, I hadn't told Denise
or anyone else about this deal. It could still fall through, making me
look gullibly stupid.
"Sure it's got a beach," I said. "Virginia
Beach."
Denise nodded her approval. "Send me a postcard.
You know the kind. Guys in bathing suits. Lots of tush."
copyright © 2005 ElenaSantangelo
BY BLOOD POSSESSED
Author: Elena Santangelo
Reissue Edition
Trade Paperback
$14.95US
ISBN 1-933523-04-2
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