Chapter 10 (Reel de Joie)
The vampire hung in chains, his arms spread wide and his body marred with lashes and burns. The shadows around him seemed to indicate a church, or a crypt? He strained against the chains, his eyes black as pitch and as flat as slate. His fangs were fully extended and his breath rasped through his parted lips in a labored and tortured wheezing.
A shape emerged from the shadows and the vampire's head came around. With the rattling of chains he lunged for her. Vicki sauntered slowly towards Mike, staying just out of the vampire's reach. The vampire struggled towards her with a strangled cry, "Vicki," but she passed him by with a negligent wave of her hand. The short red dress hugged her curves and the plunging neckline showed the darkened tops of her nipples. She crossed to Mike and put her arms around his neck. He felt the heated expanse of her skin as though she were fevered. Her eyes were solid black and he saw the small curved dark horns that parted her golden hair. Mike could feel the hot exhalation of her breath against him as she laid her head on his shoulder. "Hey handsome," she said in a sultry tone, and she lowered her hand to cup him through the fabric of his clothes.
The vampire roared aloud his pain and hunger, struggling to free himself. Then he quieted and Mike looked over Vicki's shoulder to meet the ebony eyes in what seemed a sudden and perfect understanding. Mike bent Vicki's head to the side and using blunt teeth tore at her neck. Her blood tasted salty and fever hot and was slickly wet on his lips and chin. The blood flowing red and dark from the wound he had made trickled down under the blue collar of her police uniform. "Now look what you've done," she said sulkily, and then smiled as Mike spun her around and pushed her towards the vampire.
Henry reached out to her and pulled her to him in a single smooth move. The chains rattled metallically as he folded Vicki, compliant, into his arms. Mike's eyes could not escape the vampire's as Henry lowered his mouth to the wound Mike had made for him. Vicki's hands knotted in his curls holding his face to her neck as she leaned against him, the full skirt of her antique gown pooling around her feet as Henry arched her backwards.
"You'll have to shoot him," Crowley advised where she stood at Mike's side. "You'll have to shoot him, if you want to save her," she said again as she placed Mike's gun in his hands.
"But I'll need silver bullets," Mike said as he patted at the material of the black cassock he was wearing, the chains at his own wrists dangling in a loose loop behind him. His hand closed around the worn black rosary beads that hung around his neck. "I had some silver bullets…I know I had some."
The vampire's eyes were ebony as he stared at Mike, his lips locked on Vicki's flesh as she now hung limp in his arms. Mike raised the gun and leveled it at the vampire. Henry lowered Vicki gently to the floor and then stood over her in a protective stance. Crowley's face lit with a malicious grin that bared fangs. "You'll have to shoot him through the heart," she cackled, "straight through the heart."
The vampire glanced down to Vicki and then back to Mike. Tears ran down the alabaster cheeks as with a rattling of his chains the vampire swung his arms wide baring his breast to the gun.
Straight through the heart...Mike sat bolt upright in the strange bed, and for a few seconds was completely disoriented, where was Vicki, where was...he? The grey pre-light of the early dawn was pale through the window, leaving the unfamiliar hotel room and its furnishings in shadow.
It was a dream, just a fucking dream,he thought, as he flopped backwards on the bed, the rumpled white and impersonal hotel sheets surrounding him. He remembered those bottomless black eyes and Vicki's limp form. He looked blearily towards the clock's blurring crimson numbers. Five AM. He could sleep at least a couple of more hours. He had a reservation on the eleven o'clock ferry sailing to Victoria.
Just a dream, he repeated to himself as he burrowed deeper into the blankets. He had time yet.
Mike stretched himself out on his back and crossed his hands over his chest. He could feel his racing heart slowing now under his palm. He composed his body and breathed in and out in a calming rhythm. The dream had faded now and he forced himself to drift, with eyes closed. He had a little while yet until the day would claim him.
***
Theshutters slid with a reassuring click into the frames, cutting off the grey outriders of the day. Henry stretched himself out on his back and crossed his hands over his chest. He could feel his heart slowing now under his palm. He composed his body and breathed in and out in a calming rhythm. The scents and sounds around him faded now and he forced himself to drift, with eyes closed. His limbs were now no longer in his control. He waited; he had a few moments yet until the day would claim him.
***
Tswassen Ferry Dock
11 AM Sailing to Swartz Bay Vancouver Island
The ferry dock worker waved Mike forward. Watching the man's directions through the windscreen, Mike put the rental car in gear and pulled slowly ahead, following the car in front of him to the ramp. His hands gripping the steering wheel, he followed up the steep incline of the dog-legged ramp, at least four stories to the upper car deck. He was forced to pause on the ramp's steep incline and then inch forward until at the top he could see the double wide opening through which he was directed onto the car deck. Another ferry worker waved him forward towards the last car in a line, making come closer, come closer motions until Mike was sure he was almost touching the other car's bumper before the worker held up his hand.
The opening and closing of car doors and trunks and the sound of cars thumping down onto the deck to the car decks beneath his feet reverberated inside the metallic hull of the ferry. Mike could feel the barely perceptible rise and fall of the vessel beneath his feet as the cars continued to load. He snatched his attaché and his trench coat from the back seat and began to follow the rest of the people towards the stairs.
All that freaking out…wasted, he thought. I should have planned that a little better, and taken the ridiculous traffic into consideration. But honestly what kind of a city planner makes a tunnel with three lanes going one way and one lane going the other? I thought for sure I was going to be stuck there until after the ferry sailed…And then that frigging little old man ahead of me as I was coming into the dock…come on…15 kilometers an hour in a 50 zone, good thing I had the reservation.
At the top of the stairs he followed the flow of the other passengers and found himself standing in the cafeteria line. He could see out the windows to the outdoor deck and beyond the railing to the railway jetty beside the ferry dock. He could still hear the cars being loaded below. The water was deep grey-green and to Mike's eyes looked cold. The sky was a pale and watery blue, hazed with a thin high cloud and spotted with the hovering bodies of the gulls.
***
Setting his burger and fries on the table, he took the time to pull out a file from his attaché before he sat down to eat. The nearby tables began to fill with other passengers and the level of quiet conversation around him provided a white noise conducive to his study of the file spread out before him. He felt the slight shift and sway as the ferry pulled away from the dock, a slight rocking motion and then they were underway.
The crackling announcement over the ferry loudspeakers had said that the crossing was one hour and fifty minutes from Tswassen to Swartz Bay Terminal on Vancouver Island.
It was less than an hour into the sailing as Mike drained the cold dregs of his second cup of coffee. He set the cup aside and began to gather up the file. I need to stretch my legs, he thought. I've been re-reading the same page for the last ten minutes and nothing is sticking. Sliding the last folder into the tightly packed attaché, he gazed through the windows to the outside deck.
The sun was high overhead and the water was a deep but sparkling blue. Mike watched the windblown hair and flapping garments of the people strolling by on the deck. Looks pretty damn windy, he thought as he donned his trench coat. He ran a hand through his blond hair. A few laps around the deck will clear my head and wake me up a bit, he thought.
The metal door with its double thick porthole window was far heavier than it looked, weighted against crossings where the seas were much rougher than they were today. Mike shouldered it open and then stepped over the six inch threshold. The wind pushed against him strongly as he turned his face towards the bow. His hair was blown back in a writhing mass, and the tails of his trench coat billowed and snapped behind him like a sail in the wind. He passed by a group of hearty smokers, their backs to the wind, clustered about the metal ash trays bolted to the grey deck.
The sunlight was brilliant off the water and he fished in his coat pocket for his sun glasses, watching a second ferry in the distance traveling the opposite direction. Beyond that ferry he could just make out the misty outlines of the Gulf Islands as muted dark shapes in the distance.
He was halfway up the length of the ferry and had just passed a windbreak when he heard the first strains of the melody on the wind. An enchanting tune that he could hear only intermittently, often drowned out by the flapping of his own coat tails and the crying of the gulls that hung riding the air, just off the ferry railings.
Rounding the curved bow of the ferry Mike came to a roofless, Plexiglas enclosure full of outdoor tables and seating. At first all he saw was a large group of passengers standing in a semicircle, laughing and clapping their hands and stamping their feet in time to a driving reel that was rising in the enclosed area.
The enclosure was filled to the brim with music and the wind whisked away the overflowing notes to send them spinning back along the length of the ferry. On the edges of the crowd there were children hand in hand, hopping and spinning in unfettered dance in an instinctive response as the fiddler called to their young hearts. A young boy of perhaps seven spun like a miniature whirling dervish around and around as Mike watched with a bemused smile, his own hand tapping out the rhythm against his thigh. As the fiddle fled down the final run of the tune the boy collapsed dizzily, laughing, onto the ground. Without pause the music altered and the tin whistle and the guitar took up a sprightly hornpipe.
Mike ducked inside the shelter of the enclosure and the abrupt absence of the wind felt like a magical sense of stillness, of timelessness. Crossing to the crowd Mike could see a small rather rag tag group of musicians surrounded by instruments and open cases. Guitars and fiddles, a mandolin and a beautiful red gold cello lay propped in their cases. There were five musicians sitting or standing in a group.
A frizzy haired, tall, thin man dwarfed the small bodied guitar he was playing as he stood beside a tiny pixyish woman with spiky white hair who stood tapping her feet and holding an old fiddle under her arm. She was watching the white haired man, who held the tin whistle to his lips and whose fingers tapped out the lively rhythm of the hornpipe, his chest rising and falling as his breath sent the notes soaring. He leaned towards the seated bodhràn player who was gently brushing out the rhythm against the taunt hide head, her auburn curls falling forward as she leaned her cheek on the wooden rim of the drum. Lastly, seated on a folding stool was a petit brown haired woman, compact and neatly made. She held a concertina in her lap and as the hornpipe ran down to the last of the repeats, she held in the release button on the instrument and drew out the bellows silently and gently.
"Reel de Joie," she said in a low voice, evidently announcing the name of the piece as her hands began to work the concertina's bellows as the last notes of the whistle faded away. The swelling tune started out at a moderate speed but began to repeat faster and faster until her fingers were flying over the buttons and the bellows of the instrument ran in and out like lungs breathing life into the magic she created in the music. She held the concertina on one knee and lifted and lowered both her feet in unison as she forced the tempo faster and faster. Wide grins broke out on the faces of the other musicians as they took up her challenge.
Mike felt the rhythm of the music tug at his feet and body with its own sort of magic. It gave rise to a feeling in his chest, a feeling that made him want to…that made him want to; well I'm not sure exactly what it makes me want to do. It touches something in my heart.
Mike was standing at the edge of the semicircle of the audience gathered around the musicians, almost directly in front of the concertina player. He was watching her fingers dance over the little silver buttons and when he glanced up to her face he was met by the most soulful and doe-like brown eyes that he had ever seen. Her eyes are liquid brown and look full of compassion and…knowledge, he thought.
A small smile lit her face and she ducked her chin slightly in an acknowledgement of the meeting of their eyes, and then slipped seamlessly into another, gentler and slower tune. The fiddler picked up her bow again, and raised the fiddle to her chin; the two women wove a minor and plaintive piece. The two instruments mingled into a voice both mournful and fey, the music of the seafarer and of the sea.
Mike closed his eyes and let the music take him, in a waking dream of sailing over dark deep waters past mist shrouded islands, of crashing breakers on rocky coasts.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he scarcely noticed when the fiddle and concertina trailed away and the bodhràn came up underneath in a rolling driving rhythm, syncopated and insistent like waves on the shore, or like a heart's beating.
A beautiful and melodic voice caused Mike to open his eyes and he watched enchanted as the brown eyed woman sang a haunting melody interspersed with poetic words as she unraveled the story of "Peter Kagan and the Wind." Mike was enthralled with the simple beauty of the story of the selchie wife of a fisherman, who sacrifices herself to save her husband's life.
The crowd grew quiet and leaned inwards, hanging on her words, in an echo of the bardic tradition. When the last line had faded away the passengers emitted a heartfelt sigh.
The musicians began to pack up their instruments and the sound of coins joining the sizable collection of small bills in the open case at the musician's feet was tribute to the crowd's enjoyment. The people began to disperse. After making his own contribution, and having given a small smile to the brown haired, brown eyed woman who was casing her squeezebox, Mike left the enclosure. Humming the tune, Mike made his way to the stern of the boat, with the wind pressed at his back and hurrying him along the deck and the tails of his coat snapping in front of him now..