FANGED

Chapter Forty-Eight

Once the swirly, whirly crap ceased, I found myself floating. Buoyant in a sea of tranquil darkness. I know, it sounds rather poetic coming from the likes of me, but hey...it was the best way I could think of on how to describe it. This was some undocumented freaky shit. I couldn't see a blasted thing, and I couldn't feel anything either. It was if all my senses had permanently left the building. But, oddly enough, I wasn't wigging out about the fact I was suspended in nothingness like a chunk of fruit in a cup of invisible Jell-O. It was actually...kind of calming in a weird sort of way. As if every bit of stress in my life had simply vanished, and there were no more worries. No more fears. No more suspicions. No more damn vampires insisting I put a crown on my head. Here, in this mass of absolute emptiness, I was calmer than I've ever been. Hell, if I could bottle this sensation up, I'd make a fortune.

I was lazily doing the backstroke in the inky blackness, when a thought suddenly occurred to me. I had felt this way once before. Stopping my homage to synchronized swimming, I sat bolt upright. Or at least I think I did. It was hard to tell. For all I knew, I could be hanging upside down, but that wasn't the reason my heart was trying to pound its way through my chest. That was purely to blame on this new awareness. I had definitely felt this way before...when I became an unwilling member of the not really dead undead club. Ermagerd! Did that mean I was actually dead this time?

I whirled my head around in a panic, desperate to see something. Frankly, it was a humongous waste of time. There was still nothing to see, and it only made me feel slightly dizzy in the process. If I were dead, where the heck was the tunnel of light everyone was always yammering about? Where were my angels? Where were the chubby cherubs and their damn harps? A small sob broke out of my throat. Where was Elvis? If I had shuffled off the mortal coil, I should at least be able to see the King of Rock!

I wrung my hands nervously, my mind rambling a million miles an hour on all the things I should be seeing, but wasn't. Looking down at my fretfully knitting digits, I became disgusted with myself and stopped. Only weak heroines in outdated romance novels wrung their hands. I was a fashionable, somewhat capable, mildly intelligent woman of the modern age. We didn't uselessly wring our hands.

"You slimy bloodsucking bastards!" I screamed out into the obscurity. "If you stuck me in purgatory, I am going to come back and haunt every one of you vampire assholes and rip your fucking heads off!" That's right, contemporary women replaced the impractical squeezing of our hands with loud, obnoxious cursing mixed with random threats of violence. I don't know if it was any more useful, but it sure as shit made us feel better, or at least it did me as I sat there seething in the chasm of space. All sense of my earlier calmness long gone.

A low, rumbling chuckled filled the dark void. "Now, Hotness...that is something I would willingly pay money to see."

More of the rich laughter floated around me, wrapping me in a blanket of warmth, and I sleepily closed my eyes. It was the type of sound that drew you in, and automatically made you wish to hear more of the exotic tone. It also made me suddenly want to stick my toes in the sand while I sipped an offensively overpriced sweet rum drink in an excessively decorated pineapple.

Before I could stop myself, I was swaying slowly and about to burst into a chorus of Don't Worry, Be Happy when, again...something occurred to me. Popping my eyes open wide, I realized I had heard that voice before. Huh...who would have guessed purgatory was the place for all sorts of strange déjà vu?

I dredged through my memory trying to recall his name. I was great with faces, names...not so much. Time seemed to crawl by as I flipped through my rolodex of people in my mind. Fortunately, I didn't have to go too far into the alphabetical list.

"Bob?" I called out hesitantly.

"I see you have not forgotten me."

A light swirl of white smoke engulfed me, lifting me higher and tickling my nose. Unlike at the Motel STD, it didn't smell of weed this time. Instead, it smelled of a deep, aromatic cedar and spice. Like an expensive cigar or elegant pipe tobacco.