Sacred Fire Read online

  Synopsis

  Tinsley Swann is cursed to change into a beast for seven days, every seven years. She keeps her distance from the world, and has more of a relationship with the antique erotic postcards she collects. With the time of her transformation approaching, she finds herself torn between two women. One woman is Sandra, Tinsley's new boss, and the two are having an affair. Sandra glimpses her transformation and is kind, not frightened. The other woman, Leda, bears a striking resemblance to one of Tinsley's turn of the century postcards, and she becomes obsessed with the young woman. Tinsley must choose between these two women and ultimately two factions, one that will save the world, the other with plans to destroy it.

  Sacred Fire

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  Sacred Fire

  © 2014 By Tanai Walker. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-104-8

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: May 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my GCLS mentors, Pol Robinson and Beth Mitchum, for taking the time out of their busy schedules to nurture a struggling writer. Also, thanks to Tammy for reading through one of my many drafts of this novel; you really helped me along. Thanks to Anders and Phair for the kick-in-the-ass crash course in writing they gave me one evening.

  And a very special thanks to Radclyffe and Bold Strokes Books for all their help and support!

  To Mom and Dad, who always knew I would be a published author someday. Thanks, Dad, for all your critiques and for being my very first editor. Thanks, Mom, for enabling my book habit and showing me how to look obsessively for a mix of beauty and order in the world. And thank you both for putting up with general weirdness throughout the years. You two are the best parents a writer could have.

  Chapter One

  My cell chirped and buzzed next to me on the passenger seat, letting me know I had received yet another text from Sandra. I glanced at the glowing screen as I parallel parked in front of a row of forgotten shops in a neglected part of town. I scanned the glass storefronts for some sort of clue of which door I was to enter. I put the car in park and checked my text messages.

  Dinner?????

  Her wordy attempts to engage me in an exchange of texts had diminished to one-word communiqués. I puzzled over the excess question marks, not quite versed in texting etiquette.

  I sighed and decided to get back with her after my appointment. I stepped out of my car and into the stifling heat of a south Texas June. After a failed attempt to feed a broken meter, I wandered the strip that was partially shaded by torn and broken awnings.

  The shop windows were all covered with tinting that was cracked and peeling away in big sections as if it had not been properly installed. I saw no sign of movement on the other side of the glass, only cluttered or darkened interiors. Beneath a sun-bleached but intact awning, I found a brass plate that read Cosmos’ Antiques mounted on a narrow wooden door with a matching brass handle. I pushed the door open and heard the pleasant tinkle of a large antique brass shop bell. I looked up and smiled at its quaintness. Inside, long, heavy wooden tables covered with yellowed lace cloths were laid out with rows of tarnished silverware and china, stacks of books, and various odds and ends.

  Cosmo waddled from the back, a tall, large man with heavy jowls and blond hair cut into a foppish bob that fell just past the top half of his ears. He smelled heavily of sage and wore a full black kimono with an ornate pink cherry blossom pattern. One of the sleeves was cut short to reveal a handless, deformed forearm that looked like a featherless wing.

  “Tinsley Swan?”

  “Hello, Cosmo.”

  He turned sideways to offer me his fully formed hand.

  “I hope you’ll join me for tea.”

  I agreed and Cosmo smiled as he swished past me, locked the door to the shop, and turned around the Closed sign.

  “I apologize for the neighborhood,” he said, motioning out the window. “Things are much different from when my mother first bought the place.”

  “Your mother owned this shop?”

  “Yes, for over forty years, she sold antiques, mostly to other dealers with better clientele who no doubt marked them up, but Mother never minded. She always liked old things.”

  He motioned for me to follow him. We walked behind the glass counter dominated by an ancient cash register, to a sparsely decorated room. A large wooden desk squatted in one corner, and what I suspected was a cot stood folded in a narrow hall off to the side. Cosmo pulled out a chair for me at a small table. I sat before a bamboo mat set with Japanese tea bowls, teapot, a cauldron, and dipper.

  A tea ceremony? Really? How strange.

  “I hope you like matcha,” Cosmo said.

  “Of course.”

  “I so rarely have visitors of good taste,” he said. “And when Jimmy said you would be stopping by, I began to prepare.”

  “You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”

  “I must disagree.” He smiled and bowed his head.

  How strange. I bowed and watched as he used tiny spoons to measure out powdered tea and spices into the two bowls. His movements were careful and deliberate. Cosmo used a bamboo ladle to measure out hot water and drop each serving into cups so that even the thin tendrils of steam rose uniformly. I found myself no longer uncomfortable but entranced.

  He then placed one bowl inside a wooden container anchored to the table. I realized this was to hold the bowl steady so Cosmo could use his good hand to wield a short-handled bamboo whisk to beat the green tea mixture until a bit of foam rose to the top.

  He removed the bowl from the container and turned it several times before he slowly slid it in front of me. Cosmo bowed and removed a cheesecloth from a plate of round cookies pressed with the shapes of Japanese characters. He whisked himself a bowl of tea and sat.

  Cosmo smiled and waited until I lifted the bowl to my lips before he did.

  “How wonderful,” I remarked, surprised at the herby, refreshing taste with just a hint of spiciness, all enhanced by one of the little cookies. All of it left me remarkably calm, and I didn’t feel so anxious about this precursor to the viewing of the merchandise he had to offer.

  “I’m glad you approve,” Cosmo said with a satisfied smile. “My brother is always boasting about how he contributes to your marvelous collection. I’m glad I can be of service to you. The antique business can be a lonely one.”

  “I never imagined,” I said sympathetically, though I couldn’t have cared less.

  “If you’re not well connected or in a trendy area of town,” Cosmo said. “But you don’t want to hear about my woes. You came here to see lovely things.”

  He slipped his hand under the bamboo mat and produced a black file folder, which he opened to reveal an ivory envelope. He handed it to me with the same sense of ceremony as the serving
of the tea.

  I took the envelope, opened it, and gently removed the contents―seven turn-of-the-century postcards in their own protective tinted Mylar pouches. My fingers trembled and my heart accelerated as I handled each one. They were of exquisite quality, and a few were definitely French.

  All the postcards featured women in various poses and stages of undress, mostly black-and-whites with a few sepia tones. I looked up at Cosmo, who munched on a cookie nervously as he watched.

  We both flushed.

  “You like them. I can tell,” he said quietly. “Would you like more light to view them?”

  “I brought one,” I said and removed a lighted magnifying glass from my satchel. I used my fingernail to gently open one of the pouches.

  I slid the first postcard from its pouch and switched on the glass. It felt as if I were looking through time, back to these stoic, lush women with their smooth skin and fleshy hips. In all my years of collecting, I had never found one that lacked the element of cold, quiet beauty, even the more fetishist ones.

  I eliminated two because they featured the same redundant pose of a nude girl, her back turned to the camera with one arm stretched up as she looked over her shoulder. Another I eliminated featured a “schoolroom” scene with a clothed “teacher” with a paddle and three “students” with their asses bared to the camera.

  I found a definite keeper, the image of a woman reclining nude in a wooden beach chair, a painted sea scene behind her. I liked the expression on her face and the singular curve of her body. There was another that caught my eye immediately. It was of a dark-haired woman, her head thrown back, one hand poised dramatically above her eyes, against her forehead, the other cupping one breast.

  The fourth, I found oddly playful. There were two women on a love seat; one lay across the other’s lap and waited patiently as the other cut the back of her undergarment with a large pair of scissors.

  I gasped at the fifth when I saw a familiar face.

  “I have this one, in a different pose and outfit, but I’m sure it’s her.”

  Cosmo leaned across the table. “Really?”

  I turned the card over and saw written in the upper left hand corner To Charles from Malcolm.

  Charles just happened to be the name of my great-uncle. It was among his effects at my family’s home in Galveston that I found the first postcards of my collection.

  “It’s the same background. I’m sure of it.”

  Suddenly light-headed, I studied the card. The familiar face of a young woman looked back at me. She reclined on a pile of pillows fully nude, her pubic area trimmed to match the V made by her thighs and sex. One arm was raised over her head, and her legs were crossed at the calf, one foot arched, the toes pointed. The entire effect gave the appearance that she was in the middle of a stretch. Her large, heavy-lidded eyes looked drowsy as if she had awoken from a catnap to have her picture taken.

  “Lovely,” I said and showed Cosmo. He seemed more interested that the photograph pleased me than in its subject matter.

  I returned the pictures to their pouches, separated the four I wanted, and waited for Cosmo to name a price.

  He made more tea instead, his ceremony just as precise. I accepted the second cup and sipped it to be polite, my mind on the pictures, especially the reclining woman.

  Como smiled and began to make small talk.

  “How long have you been collecting?”

  The question annoyed me, but I answered it anyway. “Since I was fourteen.”

  “Fourteen. So young?”

  I hesitated, mentally edited the story, and fast-forwarded past the summer of ’83 and my visit to Salacia, and my run-in with a curse. It was better for me to forget that summer and to pretend the place never existed.

  “Oh, you can tell me,” Cosmo said and raised his good hand in a scout’s honor.

  I took a breath to steady my nerves. “The first ones were among some antique medical illustrations.” That was partially true. I had only really started collecting the postcards after coming across them in an old bookshop when I was in my twenties.

  “I really must get back. I’m expected for dinner.” I was glad to have the excuse, even though I planned to get out of that engagement.

  “And I’m going on like there’s no tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll let them go for eighty-five, no, seventy-five each.”

  “Eighty-five each is fine.”

  “But you came such a long way,” he insisted.

  “If I got a bargain on these, it wouldn’t be any fun.”

  He laughed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  I opened my checkbook, pen poised. “Do you perhaps have any type of small accessory for a woman?”

  “I have lots of things. Is it for you?”

  “No, it’s an appreciation gift for my boss. She’s into, you know, Chanel and Louis whoever. I was thinking of a brooch, perhaps.”

  “Or a cameo.” Cosmo grinned and stood. “I have just the thing.”

  I followed him to the front of the store. He showed me a row of cameos inside the glass counter. They certainly looked like “just the thing,” and way more than I cared to pay for a gift for Sandra.

  “Don’t worry. These are reproductions from the sixties. They’re more vintage than antique,” he said and presented me with one of a partially veiled woman with a serene, almost Madonna-like expression on her face.

  “It’s resin, not shell, but it’s trimmed in sterling silver with a turquoise background,” Cosmo said. “Your boss will certainly be impressed with your good taste.”

  I pondered the gift for a minute. It was the first in our very short courtship and would make it harder to get rid of her. The cameo would make her smile, I was sure of it, and that gave me a thrill. I sighed. Why did fucking someone make you want to buy gifts?

  Cosmo grinned, thinking the price of the purchase gave me pause.

  “I’m sure we can make a deal.”

  *

  I decided to go to dinner with Sandra after all. I would give her the cameo and take her home to my bed. In less than a week, I would have to disappear off the face of the earth for seven days. I would have to break things off. Yes, it was an asshole move. Yes, there would be a special place in hell for me, but not just because I ended a short-lived affair with Sandra Ortega.

  I made my way home blasting my AC to ward off the triple-digit heat. As I turned down my street, the Volvo’s tires made a pleasant hum against the cracked and uneven one-hundred-year-old red bricks that paved Valentine Lane. My street was one of several forgotten by the city when it upgraded to cement, just as it had been forgotten when the city first covered the dirt roads with bricks.

  At the end of Civil War, ex-slaves claimed the area and established a community with its own schools, a hospital, stores, and churches. They named it Freedman’s Town, and like such neighborhoods across the country, it became a haven from the Jim Crow madness of the South. The first residents of my neighborhood purchased the bricks for the roads themselves and laid them. These days, dilapidated houses, and churches over a century old stood cheek and jowl with newly built, stylish townhomes. In a city that longed to take its place among the country’s magazine-named ranks of the best cities to live, history stood in the path of progress.

  Sixteen years ago, I saw a different opportunity for sanctuary when I heard about the uproar over a brick Baptist church that was to be torn down, the land it had sat on since 1896 sold to the highest bidder. The new owner of that lot happened to be my father, who was not too thrilled at being the center of such a scandal. I talked him out of the land for a reasonable price, and renovated the church into a house.

  Eventually, the housing market bombed and an inevitable recession followed. The revitalization of Freedman’s Town stalled with only the outer perimeter finished with a high-rise of lofts, a few sidewalk cafés, fine restaurants, and trendy businesses. Meanwhile, the center of the neighborhood continued to crumble around the new houses and their yuppie residents.<
br />
  My home remained, hidden in the center behind a massive, even older Baptist church and two cemeteries. I despised elitist yuppie neighborhoods. While my more professional neighbors anxiously awaited signs of continued development, I lived in complete contentment.

  A group of kids huddled together at the curb in front of my house, their heads bent as they inspected something in the street. Several rusted, scraped-up bikes blocked my driveway.

  I stopped and gave my horn a quick bleat, but the children didn’t seem to notice. They were the children of the row houses, and they had the run of the neighborhood during the summertime.

  I inched the Volvo closer and honked. Several of the group of about six looked up at me and then turned their attention to the street before them. I climbed out of the car to see what was going on.

  They took notice of me and seemed to snap out of their trance. The children ranged in ages from about five to nine, boys and one girl. They were dressed in an assortment of shorts, jeans, and T-shirts. What they did all have in common were black armbands silk-screened with some logo of a rising sun that doubled as the face of a lion.

  I saw what they were huddled over: the carcass of a possum, buzzing in the summer heat with several species of fly. The smell nearly knocked me out, yet it also fascinated me. My stomach rumbled, not with disgust but hunger. I backed away a few steps, shocked at the reaction.

  One of the kids studied me with large, soulful eyes. He had dusky skin and a cap of sleek black hair. Perspiration beaded his face.

  “It’s a dead cat-snake,” he said solemnly.

  I frowned in disbelief of their ignorance. “That’s a possum. You kids shouldn’t bother with it. You could catch a disease.”

  A few of them stepped back, alarmed.

  The only girl among them looked up and scowled. “She’s lying. People can’t get no animal diseases.”