Caprice

Chapter 1 - Angels, Demons & Vampires-2

Tera screamed. With quick hands Grandma grabbed the rolls from her before she dropped them to the floor.

The eight-year old surged for her mother and wrapped her little arms around Constance's leg.

“Land sakes!” Grandma Rose hissed with annoyance. “It's just a storm.” She slammed the rolls on the table, and a couple fell out. One rolled to my plate and stopped. I picked it up and put it on my plate. Still warm. Where's the butter? I looked for the fancy-rectangular-shaped butter dish. It was too far away. Damn.

Constance looked sharply at Grandma. Dismissing her outburst, she said to Tara, “Oh, honey, it's just a storm. We talked about this before. Remember?” Her hands protectively cupped Tera's head. The little girl had a hard time with storms. Her younger sister, Jena had no trouble at all with them.

“When did it start raining?” I wondered, checking the windows. The outside was totally pitch-black until another bolt lit up the sky and yard.

The lights in the house went out for four seconds, and came back on at half-power. Everyone gasped. A soft amber glow of four candles on the table was the only other light, other than the fireplace in the living room. We all looked up at the weird dim light in the chandelier above. It looked as though Randy had put the dimmer switch on the lowest setting.

“Oh, sh-h—” Randy stopped himself from his need to curse when Grandma Rose shot him an angry scowl. She didn't abide by curse words, and he well knew it.

“Randy?” Constance said, concern in her voice.

“Oh, we got some power,” he placated. “Plus we have candles and the fireplace is going. What more light do we need?”

“Very romantic,” Bill said, leaning toward me.

I gave him a sideways glance, doing my best to discourage him.

“Kinda like being real pilgrims,” Randy said, trying to make the most of the situation.

“The pilgrims didn't have turkey,” Tara said, pulling away from her mother who guided her toward the card table.

“The Indians caught deer, and rabbits,” Chris added knowledgeably.

“Alright, smarty pants,” Randy muttered.

Chris' parents both chuckled at Randy's remark.

“Kids think they know everything these days,” Uncle Monte said.

“It's this Internet crap,” Randy remarked, seating himself at the head of the table.

Constance sat to his right. Next to her was Bill. Grandma sat directly in front of me. Tera and Jena sat at a card table with Brian and Chris.

“Grandma Rose, I purposely left the other end of the table for you,” Constance said to her. This was normally only a six foot table—room for six—until they put the extensions in, and now could seat eight comfortably.

“Bah,” she said. “I'm fine right here.”

Red flag number two. Grandma always sat at the head of the table when she came for the holiday meals. It was some sort of tradition, I gathered, since she was the matriarch of the family. A chill drew up my arms. I might not be able to read Grandma, but my werewolf's sensitivities were tingling.

“Besides, my son would have sat there,” she said, jutting out her chin. Meaning our dad who had died this past summer in a plane crash. I missed him terribly.

“Con, she can sit wherever she wants,” Randy said in a placating voice. “Plenty of room,” he added, which was true. If Mrs. Bench—Bill's grandmother—had come she would be sitting across from me. One place setting was left open, now.

I looked down trying to keep tears from forming. This would be the first holiday we would miss my dad. Bill's hand touched my shoulder in a tender way. I glanced up at him.

“He is at peace,” Bill said, his words meant for me, but the others heard it.

“Darn right,” Randy said, looking directly at Bill. “Let's just think about the things we're grateful for tonight. Okay?”

The candle flames jumped and danced, creating strange shadows on everyone's faces. I hadn't noticed the soft music playing in the background until the silence filled the room. No one said a word. It was almost as if everyone had taken a breath and held it, waiting for something to happen.

I cut my eyes across the table, beyond the center piece of a harvest motif, to Grandma. I thought it odd, but Grandma's eyes looked… red. Demon red. I decided it must be the glow of the candles through her glasses, because when I looked again the red was gone. She smiled at me, creases in her face deepening. Then she looked away. Weird.

Randy clasped his hands in front of himself. “Someone going to say grace?” He looked to Grandma. “Grandma, you want to do the honors?”

Everyone looked at her, since she was the matriarch and eldest person in the room.

I tried to think of what I was grateful for. I'm grateful to be here tonight. There were no vampires, no werewolves. I nearly had a paranormal-free evening, except for Bill. But he was being pleasant and polite—which was annoying in and of itself. As long as he didn't try to abduct me later, this was all good.

Too bad we'd had to put up with Grandma Rose's snarky remarks about Constance's cooking. Normally she would try to instigate arguments between Randy and Uncle Monte on sports, politics and anything else. Oddly enough, she hadn't said a word about any of those subjects tonight, come to think of it. My awareness prickled again. All was not right with the Strong family, and I was having a big problem with this.

“Sabrina? Are you alright?” Bill asked, leaning over to me.

He smells great. He looks great. What's wrong with me? I was trying to remember why I shouldn't ask him over for coffee after we left tonight. It was taking me a long time to debate my pros and cons over asking the off-spring of fallen angels over to my house. One that had basically proposed to me a few weeks back.

Oh, right. I wore Vasyl's wedding ring. I had walked out of the wedding ceremony a few weeks back. Technically, I was not a free woman. Not on paper, at least. I was pretty sure

asking Bill over for coffee would be considered cheating on Vasyl—although Vasyl and I had not actually been together since our wedding night. I'd been a little busy trying to find Lindee in another world. He was angry with me for that and other things. Meanwhile, I'd been trying to get over Dante's death. Oh, yeah. I'd had a busy week that felt like a month.

“Grandma?” Randy prompted again. “You want to say grace?”

Grandma's mouth twitched, her eyes squinting at him as though he'd slapped her. She gazed all around the table, like she'd been outnumbered. She brought her hands up and put them together palm-to-palm, fingers straight. I had never seen her do this before, and it reminded me of how the girls would pray before bedtime when I baby-sat them.

“Dear—eh—Lord,” she began. “Bless this table and this meal. Ah-h—men.” She dropped her hands, looked up, and sniffed as though the task had been a monumental achievement. The whole room relaxed and heads came up from their bows. That had been the shortest grace I'd ever heard Grandma recite in the history of family meals.

I looked around the room. Uncle Monte, with his light brown hair, graying at the temples, smiled at me from Grandma's left side, crow's feet around the eyes deepening. He looked like my dad when he smiled. Aunt Shelly, seated next to him, caught my gaze and smiled too. I'd noticed her super tan was fading since I'd seen her last at my father's funeral this summer. She'd allowed her hair to grow out to her shoulders, and it was highlighted, somewhat like Constance's. It was styled nicely around her oval face.

I glanced over at the card table where Tara, and Jena sat with their two cousins. Normally the girls were well behaved, until they were exposed to a strong influence—like their cousins. Jena had inherited Randy's dark hair and Constance's blue eyes and dimples. Tera was not Randy's daughter, but from Constance's first marriage. Her husband had died in Iraq, several years back. She had remarried into our family and I loved them all.

Chris and Brian were acting goofy, as usual.

“Oh… SNAP!” Brian said.

The girls giggled.

“Oh… snap!” Chris burped.

The girls sniggered harder when Brian tipped over on his chair laughing hysterically.

“Chris! That's enough!” Uncle Monte's voice boomed. Constance and I jumped.

“What's that mean, 'oh snap'?” Grandma asked, looking at Uncle Monty and Aunt Shelly.

“Oh, it's just some silly thing they say. It doesn't mean anything,” Aunt Shelly said.

“Sit up straight!” Uncle Monte said.

“Okay! Who wants dark meat?” Randy's voice boomed.

“Meeeee!” the children chorused. They all popped up with their plates in hands.

“Come over and get yourselves some meat and potatoes,” Randy said to the children, holding out the platter of meat. The four got in line in front of him. “We'll get you all set up.”

The chime of the doorbell caught me by surprise. For some reason my abilities didn't foretell of someone coming to the door, which I found odd. I was actually getting super annoyed by my lack of precognition tonight. No phone or knock on the door has ever surprised me, unless they happened to be supernatural. This sharpened my awareness, though I still couldn't read who exactly was out there. But I had a funny stirring inside. Down low. Oh, hell. My skin became chilled, anticipating any one of the vampires in my life who'd had my blood to be at the door. I moved my gloved hands down to my lap. My gloves were paramount to keeping me from going into a deep trance-like state, or blurting out something that would embarrass everyone. Sliding the right-hand glove off my hand, I uncovered the mystic ring. I received this ring through the cosmos, along with unusual powers as the sibyl. One of the things the ring did was made me resistant to all vampire thralls. Whoever was out there was a master. I tried to imagine Vasyl out there, but couldn't. The alternative was not better by a long shot.

Bill's hand slid over mine, and I yanked it away and glared at him. I needed my hand uncovered. His green eyes met mine, then darted toward Grandma Rose, as though implying something of import.

“Oh, for the love of Pete! Who could that be?” Randy snarled.

“I'll get it,” Constance said, and began to rise.

“No. No… You all go on and eat. I'll get it,” Randy said, and popped up out of his chair and crossed the room like someone had put a fire under him. “Who else did you invite that I don't know about, Con?” I knew my brother was joking, because he made his trademark “haw-haw” laugh—stomping toward the door. The fire in the fireplace, and all the strobe-lightning through the windows helped him find his way to the door.

Then, the lights went completely out, and threw us into almost complete darkness. A breeze from somewhere blew out the candles. A chill ran through me. I turned around to gaze toward the door. Lightning flashed, the brilliance through the windows blistered my retinas, and I was temporarily blinded. But the image of a tall man in the doorway had been burned into my mind's eye. I wasn't sure if I had actually seen it, or it had been a trick of the lightning. Either way, it was scary as hell. Another shiver traveled up my spine. A prickly feeling skittered up my neck and chilled me. My heart thumped in my chest and a Knowing spread throughout my being.