Pool of Crimson

chapter 4



Nothing. I turned the key in the ignition again. The engine sputtered and growled but didn’t turn over.

“From what you heard ... the artiman something ... I could start researching,” Jade said, but I was only half listening.

“Ahriman,” I corrected absently as I turned the key again and listened to the engine sputter. Still nothing. What the hell? I sat back in the driver’s seat, annoyed. “Wait! What did you say?” I asked as my mind snapped back into focus.

“The Ahriman thingy. I can look into it. I could see if the stone means anything,” Jade said with a bright smile as she stood beside me, arm draped over my open car door. It was full dark, and I wanted to get her in her car and on her way home. I’d been on edge since my encounter a few nights back, looking over my shoulder, jumping at my own shadow. I’d even been a little apprehensive about meeting Jade for dinner when she called. I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten my number but as dinner progressed, I was glad she had.

Jade was funny. She was easy to talk to and practiced the fine art of sarcasm with as much finesse as I did. I liked her, and I hadn’t made a new friend in what seemed like a lifetime. Standing in the dark where I knew we could both be in danger made me reconsider the whole evening.

I tried the key again and felt the rumble of the engine try to turn over. I turned it in the ignition again. Nothing. “Yeah, sure,” I said. I had to get the engine to run. She wasn’t going to leave until I did.

“What’s wrong with it?” Jade asked as she crouched beside me.

“I don’t know. The engine won’t turn over,” I said, anger filling my voice. I turned the key in the ignition one more time in protest, then slammed my palms against the steering wheel. “It was fine on the way up here,” I said through clenched teeth.

“That’s all right. Call AAA,” she said calmly.

“Yeah,” I said hesitantly. “I guess you’re right.” The sooner I got it running, the sooner she would be home and safe.

After an hour of sitting in my car and waiting for AAA, I’d forgotten all about what could be lurking outside. I was laughing too hard.

“So we go on this date and everything started out so well,” Jade said with a sigh. “We had dinner at Morgan’s down in German Village and it was great. We’d been friends for a really long time. We had fun, he was easy to talk to, and the drinks kept coming,” she said with a small, sad smile. “He suggested that we go dancing, which I love to do, so we went to Alabaster. The guy at the door charged us a $40 cover which freaked him out to the point he was going to turn around and leave after standing in line for half an hour. So I paid for it.” She rolled her eyes. “My dad has money and if I want something, I just ask. It’s not a big deal,” she said with a hint of explanation to her voice.

I already knew she wasn’t hurting for money by the new BMW she drove. “I guess my paying didn’t make him feel any better. He went all sensitive about the money thing and started to drink once we got inside. A lot.”

I could tell from her tension-filled shoulders and the stone line of her jaw that although her tone was jovial and upbeat, this one had hurt more than she wanted to admit.

She sighed heavily before she continued. “At some point, he decided that it was time to make out. Not just with me but with whoever would let him.” She glared at me with a look that was filled with anger and embarrassment, but most of all hurt. “I needed a break so I went in search of the restroom. I was considering just calling a cab and leaving when I found a restroom that was basically empty.” Her expression was so animated I bit down on my lips to keep from laughing. “Amazing, I know. An empty restroom in a huge dance club,” she blurted out in frustration. “There were only a few stalls in there and one was disgusting so I moved on to the next one. Well, there was no toilet paper in that one so I reached into the previous stall to get some toilet paper. I hadn’t noticed anyone come in behind me but evidently, someone had.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “As I leaned over, I felt a hand push my skirt up and before I could react, he licked my ass,” she said, mortification written all over her face as emotion shook her voice.

I stared at her with my mouth open. “What did you do?” I asked, choking on my own laughter.

She glared at me in a way that made me feel like we’d been friends for years. It was nice. I didn’t have many friends, exactly one actually.

“In shock at what he’d done, I stared at my so-called friend for a long minute, and then shoved his head in the toilet.”

She was furious. I could almost see the fire coming from her nostrils. I burst out laughing, filling the car with the sound.

“I’m sorry,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. A knock at my window, three quick thumps of a knuckle on glass almost had me jumping out of my skin. We both broke into nervous laughter as the bulky guy with a AAA jacket dropped down to look in the window.


“Well, Ma’am, it’s not the battery. I can tow it back to the garage on Third Avenue for you but that’s about all I can do here,” the tow truck driver said, after fifteen minutes of tinkering under my hood.

“I guess if it’s not going to start, I’ll have to take that,” I replied, my shoulders slumping in frustration.

“Do you need a ride, Ma’am?” he asked after watching me for a silent moment.

“No, Sir,” Jade said with a broad and bright smile that turned the corners of her mouth up in a sexy grin. The tow truck driver noticed, too, and couldn’t seem to take his eyes from her smile. “I’ll take her home,” she finished with a cocky hand on her hip.

The guy hoisted my car up onto the back of his flatbed and I waved goodbye to my ten year old, piece of shit, Pontiac. Damn it.

I slid into the warm leather seats of Jade’s fairly new BMW 3 Series Sedan. Everything was jet black, smooth, and sleek. It looked as if it was built for stealth. When she said that her dad had money, she wasn’t kidding. This thing was top of the line.

“So, where to?” she asked with a smile as she started the car in a roar of a beautifully tuned engine, something I hadn’t heard in a very long time.

“Grandview,” I said as I fastened my seatbelt. “I hope this isn’t taking you out of your way?” I suddenly felt ashamed. We’d gone to a sushi restaurant on the North end of town, but I had no idea where she lived.

“Don’t worry about it. I was just going to go home and start working on this Atiman thingy,” she said with a smile.

“Ahriman.”

“Right, so this Ahriman could be a lot of things but if we combine it with the amulet you found, I’d say demon.”

“Demon, huh?” I asked as I shifted in my seat to face her. I’d grown up Catholic so I knew theoretically about demons but being told as a child about the fall of Lucifer and knowing that vampires were actually protecting themselves against demons were two different things.

“Yeah,” she said as she glanced at me from the corner of her eye then pulled onto I-71 South.

I caught a flash of headlights as I glanced out the rearview window.

“Especially with the caraway. That ingredient would guard against any demon since it’s powerful enough to guard against Lilith, the mother of all demons. The obsidian gives it a special twist I can’t quite figure out yet.”

A brand new white Dodge Charger pulled up alongside us at high speed in the lane to the left of Jade’s car. They slowed and maintained our speed, then dropped to just behind Jade’s rear bumper. The driver, a small woman with thick, curly, dark hair who could barely see over the dashboard, gawked at us. The passenger, however, kept his head turned toward the driver and away from us.

The look in the driver’s eyes as they met mine was predatory and hungry and set my teeth on edge.

The passenger finally looked at me with a sneer. SMARMY! The glint of recognition in his eyes made my pulse race. Their presence was no coincidence.

“Now, I’ve never seen—”

“Jade,” I interrupted with a sharp tone. Her bright green eyes turned to me in surprise. “Can you slow down for me, please?” I said in a calmer tone, belying the pounding of my heart. An exit was coming up. We needed to make that without the Dodge Charger getting off, too.

Jade looked confused, but she dropped a good five miles per hour off her speed, taking her foot from the gas and not applying the brake. The white Dodge Charger did the same.

“Are we in trouble?” Jade glanced in her side mirror at the car slowing in the lane beside her.

“Not yet, just keep it at this speed and then take the I-270 West exit at the very last minute, then gun it,” I said, keeping an eye on the smirk cresting Smarmy’s lips.

I really wish I was driving. I’d show him a few tricks.

Jade did exactly what I said and when we hit the onramp, she laid her foot down on the gas, hard. The turbo engine revved and I whipped around in my seat to see where the white Charger was. It was hard to find in the darkness, and then I spotted it.

The driver was coming for us, across three damned lanes of traffic. Horns blared from the highway in long angry cries. She made the turn through the grass and headed up the hill, off-road, and toward us.

“Shit.” Smarmy and the crazy lady were gaining on us. “Go, go, go,” I yelled as the Charger closed in. I felt Jade’s car change gears and knew we had already hit 75 miles per hour.

“Get around this car, now!”

Jade swerved the car hard, and I drifted up, straining again the seatbelt before slamming my back into the door. I pulled myself back into the seat, my fingers clutched around the headrest as she straightened the car out. The white Charger bore down on us like a rampaging beast, all growling grill and glaring headlights. It was going to hit us. No, it was going to ram us.

Jade drove like a woman who wanted to avoid an accident or a ticket and the Charger drove like it wanted to send us into oblivion. That was the only thing keeping the Charger in proximity to Jade’s BMW.

God, I wish I was driving.

“Change lanes,” I screamed at her.

Jade slid the car easily into the next lane. A BMW should have been able to outrun the Charger any day of the week but not with Jade driving. “Drive this f*cking car like you mean it!” I shouted in frustration.

The Charger got within a few feet of the bumper of Jade’s car and everything seemed to move in slow motion. I couldn’t do a damned thing but watch it happen. The Charger bumped Jade’s back end almost gently but the jolt rippled through the car like it was on a chain-pulled roller coaster. The force of the impact slammed me back in my seat and against the door. “Get over,” I screamed again over the pounding in my ears.

Jade jerked the car into the next lane then fought to straighten it out and keep control. Just as we were almost out of reach and I could see another exit, the metallic sound of metal on metal ripped through the air as the Charger clipped the back end of Jade’s car. I was flung back against my seat from the pull of the spin and pinned to the passenger side door as the car spun out of control. The entire world went silent as the tires squealed.

Tail lights. Trees. Head lights.

Taillights, trees, headlights.

Taillightstreesheadlights.

Taillights ...


I opened my eyes to flashing red and blue lights and the deafening sound of a siren filling my ears. My neck was stiff and my chest hurt like someone had hit me with a brick. The airbag pressed me back into my seat, pinning me against the seat and door. A paramedic stood on the other side of the passenger side door screaming something I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t focus on him. My vision was blurry and blood pounded in my head, which scared me more than the throbbing in my side. A soft groan to my left brought my attention back into the car. I turned my head slowly as my brain seemed to slosh around in my skull.

“Uhhn.”

“Jade? You all right?” I asked, my voice harsh and gravelly. It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move.

“Uhhn,” she groaned again as her head rolled to her shoulder. Her bright green eyes fluttered open, then looked at me, unseeing and unfocused.

“What happened?” she whispered in a hoarse voice that sounded like she’d been smoking for the past thirty years.

“We got run off the damned road,” I bit out.

“Why?” she asked in a pain-filled groan as she tried to push the airbag out of her way. A fireman was at my door with a crow bar. The scrunch of metal sent shivers up my spine as he pried the door open.

“I think we’re getting close,” I said, just before the smoke from the wreck rushed into the car and I coughed as the smoky air filled my lungs. The fireman cut the airbag and my seatbelt before pushing both out of his way.

“Can you move?” he yelled at me. The sound from the sirens combined with people yelling on the closed-off highway and the blare of distant horns honking rang in my ears.

“Yeah,” I said defiantly. I moved to step out of the car but he stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. A Paramedic pushed his way through to my side and knelt down in front of me.

“Ma’am, where does it hurt?” he asked quickly as he turned deep hazel eyes up to meet mine.

“It might be faster to ask where doesn’t it hurt,” I said in a raspy reply. The paramedic froze where he knelt as he looked at me, his eyes wide as if I’d just sprouted a second head with fangs with fear behind his surprised expression. It made me nervous. “Hey, it was a joke,” I said putting my hand on his shoulder, using him as leverage to push myself out of the rumpled metal that had once been Jade’s beautiful car.

“Uh, yeah,” he said in a breathy disoriented tone as he shook his head. He stood and moved a step closer behind me, flanking me.

“I’m fine. Check on her please,” I said with a little authority to my tone. Hell, if I convinced them I was fine, maybe they’d leave me alone. I didn’t need the police discovering the knife in my boot. That was always hard to explain. Anyway, Jade looked worse off.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said in a bright cheery tone and hopped to it like a good little soldier. The paramedic walked around the hunk of now useless metal and met the fireman as he pried Jade’s door off. He met my eyes one last time over the roof of Jade’s crumpled car with a wistful smile before he knelt beside her.

All right, that was weird.

“Ms. ...?” I heard from over my left shoulder. I turned. A tall, dark-haired man stood behind me in a police uniform. He had light blue eyes and a handsome enough face. He was too bulky, though, and looked like he’d spent too much time in a frat house to do any woman any good.

“Sabin,” I said, straightening my back with a wince and working the kinks from my neck. “Dahlia Sabin.”

“Your friend ...”

“Jade,” I finished for him. His eyes shot to meet mine, wide with fear. He took the few steps around me, his eyes peering through the shattered tempered glass of the windshield to find Jade still sitting in the front seat.

“Danny, is she ...” he started to ask in a voice that was softer than it should have been for a total stranger. He cleared his throat and refocused on me. “Jade Markowitz was driving?” he asked, forcing a business tone into his voice but I’d made him. He knew her.

“She’s all right,” I said softly. He looked up at me with gratitude etched across his brow and gave me a quick nod. “Yes, she was driving,” I said, back to business. I mean, she was still sitting in the driver’s seat. I gave him the make and model of the car that ran us off the road and a partial plate. I could only remember the first three letters. Everything else was fuzzy around the edges since that bitch had hit us.

Once he had all my information, Officer Derek Hamlin and I walked back over to Jade’s side of the car. The paramedic had picked Jade out of the car and placed her on a gurney like she weighed next to nothing.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, suddenly afraid that she really was hurt. Her face was so pale, her eyes sunken in and without the usual playful luster that I’d grown to count on. She looked suddenly fragile.

“She needs some stitches, and I’d like to get her to the hospital to make sure there’s no internal bleeding,” the paramedic said as he met my eyes again with his own beautiful hazel gaze. He looked at me as if he knew me inside and out. As much as I wanted that to frighten me, it didn’t.

They wheeled her to the ambulance on a waiting gurney and lifted her in. I hopped in after her and took a seat. Officer Hamlin whispered something in Jade’s ear that made her smile weakly before the paramedics closed the doors.

That probably happens a lot to her.

I expected the paramedic to have the same reaction to Jade as, it seemed, every other man did in her presence. He checked her vitals and started an IV but he watched me, even when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.

I leaned back and sank into the bench as I tried to disappear in the small space of the back of the ambulance. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. He scrutinized me as if he didn’t know what to do with me. Under the sharp examination of his gaze, I was consumed with a deep sense of comfort and belonging. That was the part that was wiggin’ me the hell out. Somewhere deep in my gut, it seemed oddly right.


I rested my head in my hands with my elbows on my knees, trying to get a handle on what I’d learned and what I hadn’t. My head was still spinning from the accident, which wasn’t helping me make sense of any of it. I was tired. I ached all over, and I hurt more than I was willing to admit. I rubbed my eyes with the palm of my hand before I remembered I was wearing eye makeup. My fingers came away coated in burgundy sparkles and black mascara.

“Damn it,” I said as I rubbed my eye-shadow-covered fingers together. I was already covered in blood, grime, and dirt. I guess a little smeared makeup didn’t matter. I rolled my eyes in disgust and with a heavy breath tried to focus on what actually mattered.

Someone had tried to kill me.

Someone had tried to kill me while Jade was in the car.

Warmth spread across my skin like the heat from the hot July sun, pushing against my skin like a raging fire. I scanned the empty space around me. No one sat within twenty feet of me. No one wanted anything to do with the woman covered in dirt, grime, and blood. No one, that is, except the paramedic that was striding confidently across the hospital waiting room. It was quiet as he approached, as if the entire room waited on pins and needles with me to see what happened. He had an energy that seemed to spread out around him like heat from a fire. It was warm and homey and made me feel safe in a way that I’d never felt before. He stood silently a few feet from me for a long moment, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

I didn’t want to look at him. I was tired. I wanted to go home, and God only knew what he wanted. I didn’t have the brainpower left to be smart and play verbal chess with anyone. I needed sleep and a hot bath.

I finally raised my head, trying to convey to him my fatigue and annoyance that he would bother me at such a fragile time. He smiled; big, brilliant, and inviting. What exactly was there to smile about? It had been a real shitty night.

“Hi,” he said with too much energy and that bright smile. He seemed to gleam even in the harsh hospital lights.

“Hello,” I replied curtly. I didn’t have anything left in me to be cordial.

“Would you like to go out with me?” he asked simply, no preemptive conversation, no buffer, nothing. He stood there, calm and collected with a confident grin on his face that didn’t seem to waiver no matter how long I stared at him in silence with my mouth gaping open.

He seemed so sure, so confident. He threw me off my game entirely. “Wow, speechlessness. I bet that doesn’t happen to you very often. You don’t seem the type to be tongue tied,” he said, laughing to himself and a bit at me.

“Um, n-no it doesn’t,” I stammered and shut my mouth quickly.

I hadn’t been on a date in a very long time and this guy was standing in front of me with his hands in his pockets like my answer could crush him. No one has ever asked me out, ever.

“Okay.”

“Good.” His eyes brightened with a twinkle that brought a smile to my lips. I couldn’t imagine how his eyes actually got brighter, but they did. “How does tomorrow work for you?”

Ah ... um ...

“Yeah, sure,” I said with a small, shy smile. A flutter of awareness turned my stomach to butterflies and my skin flushed with embarrassment. “My name’s Dahlia, by the way,” I said, standing and extending my hand to shake his forcefully, pushing that other, less sure, self back down. I couldn’t let him see he made me nervous. He had a firm handshake, warm hands, and I was impressed that he didn’t ease up on me. Most guys tend to go soft when they shake hands with a woman. He didn’t.

“My name’s Danny,” he said with a smile and a quick nod. “I’ll call you about a time, and I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said quickly. His fingers lingered lightly over mine, sending a white-hot heat through me until he released my hand, leaving his card in my palm.

He went back to his partner, who waited by the reception desk, watching with a shit-eating grin on his face.

I sat speechless and stunned as a very large Latina nurse wheeled Jade back into the waiting room from triage. The poor nurse didn’t look happy with her patient.

Jade saw me and stepped out of the chair before it stopped, pushing the chair back into the nurse. She got to her feet against the advice of the poor woman trying to stop her with a half-hearted effort. Jade limped over to where I stood without a glance back at the nurse. I met the poor woman’s eyes with a silent apology but she ignored me and went back behind the double doors of the triage unit. I had a sneaking suspicion that the nurse was secretly glad to get rid of Jade.

Jade whimpered with every step but she hobbled over to me, determined.

“Let’s catch a cab,” I said motioning toward her wheelchair. She shrugged me off and headed for the emergency room entrance, defiant to the last.

I caught her arm quickly just above the elbow and stopped her with my firm grasp. It wasn’t hard since she was already weak from blood loss and pain. “We’re not going out that way,” I said softly as I motioned toward another door. I explained as I walked with her arm tightly tucked underneath my own. “For those who know, there’s more than one way to get in and out of the emergency room. The hospital buildings are all connected by a series of tunnels.” I smiled, trying to reassure her. She didn’t smile back. She looked like she was in pain and trying to hide it. The farther we walked, the more her expression reflected that pain and the slower our pace.

“You think they followed us here,” she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice. It wasn’t a question.

“It’s just a precaution but if it were me and I’d just tried to run someone off the road, I’d wanna check. We came in the Emergency Department but we don’t have to leave that way. We’ll go up to the main hospital and leave from there. There are usually a few cabs waiting at the main entrance anyway. We won’t have to wait.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a long time as we made our way through the tunnels. I imagine it was a longer walk than she’d suspected.

The tunnels always gave me the creeps, helped by the florescent lights in a long line against the ceiling giving a greenish tint to everything. The tunnels were thousands of dark gray cinder blocks lining almost a half a mile of tunnels, giving it a cold prison feel and like prison, there was no way out except the other end.

Jade looked just as uncomfortable in the long, dreary hallway. Her eyes darted from side-to-side and occasionally over her shoulder back down the long empty corridor. The only sound in the tunnel was the click, click, click of our heels on the cement beneath our feet.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” Jade whispered, but her quivering voice seemed to echo in the emptiness of the tunnel, bouncing off cold walls and green tinted floors.

“Yeah, sure,” I said with a quick look over my own shoulder.

I caught a glance of her from the corner of my eye. She looked shaken, her body stiff and her breathing shallow with shock but she tried to hide it.

How could I be thinking about letting her stay in my house? She was a complete stranger and being involved with me had almost cost Jade her life. But she could think on her feet and I liked her. I only had Amblan. I was selfish, and I didn’t care. I’d gone so long, alone and alienated. I just wanted a little time where I wasn’t alone anymore. Just a little time and then I could go back to being alone.

“I want to help,” she said softly as we made our way through the door to the main hospital. I wanted her help. Hell, I needed her help. I didn’t know shit about herbs and amulets and as blasé as she was about the subject and how she only did it to piss her dad off, she was good at it.

“I’ll think about it. We’ll see how things look in the morning,” I said after a long pause. I was too tired, more than a bit shaken, and too far out of my element to trust my own judgment. I changed the subject instead.

“That police officer seemed to know you,” I said as I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

“Yeah,” she said as she bit her top lip and quickly looked away. We’d reached the admission’s waiting room. “You know that story I told you about the bad date and the bathroom?” she asked sheepishly.

“Him, really?” I said in amazement as the laughter bubbled up again.

“Yeah,” she said, sadness deepening her sultry alto to something deeper.

We reached the hospital’s main entrance after what seemed like an eternity with the smell of ammonia in my nose. Thankfully, there was a cab already waiting. We got in quickly as I glanced over the roof of the car and scoped around for anything that sent my internal warning system off. It all seemed too clean or too sloppy, I couldn’t decide which. Maybe I wasn’t a big enough threat to worry about. Maybe they had other plans. All I could do was close the door and direct the driver toward Grandview. Everything else would have to wait.