Bloodleggers #2: Say Good-bye to Daddy

Welcome back to the second part of Bloodleggers! This week we introduce Regina Todd, our vampire heroine, although in this part and the next you’re meeting her two years prior to the actual start of the story, when she was still a human. You’ll also meet her uncle, Magnus MacKay, who is slowly becoming a main character. We don’t want to give anything away, so we’ll leave this intro at that. But first…

The winner of the free eBook published by eBookUndead is Nancy Overbury. CONGRATULATIONS!!

And now, on to the second part of Bloodleggers.  We hope you enjoy the read!

–W. J. Howard & R. J. Robyn
Bloodlegger’s Blog
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Previous Parts

“The humans are ignorant and undisciplined. Transformation to our kind without the proper trials and necessary years of indentured servitude is an error in judgment.”

–Elder Ysabell of Clan de Bohun, Scotland, The Congress of Glenluce, 1183 A.D.

November 5th, 2008, Mile High Mortuary, 6th Avenue, Denver Colorado

Regina Todd paced the shiny concrete floor of the crematorium holding a cell phone against her ear with one hand and nervously flicking the black polish off her thumbnail with the other. “C’mon, Piers,” she grumbled, “answer.”

“You have reached Piers Todd, Attorney at Law with the…”

Irritated, she bit her tongue and held her thumb down hard on the button to end the call. She wasn’t stupid. Ever since her brother Piers was nine years old, and their father had sent him to live with their aunt, their relationship had been tolerant at best. In most cases, they couldn’t be in the same room for more than fifteen minutes. So it was no surprise that since she had told her brother about their father’s death from a heart attack three days ago, he had been ignoring her calls.

“Fool,” she groused while shaking the phone. Again, she hit the speed dial for Piers and when his phone rang for the fourth time, she turned and kicked the portable human refrigerator unit beside her. “Answer your fucking phone!”

“Regina,” echoed a deep disapproving voice from across the long narrow room.

She glanced in the direction of her uncle, Magnus MacKay, and rolled her big brown eyes just seconds before they dropped with disappointment as her pleading was again answered by Piers’s voicemail.

“I told you, my darling, he’s not going to come.”

“If he doesn’t say good-bye to Daddy, he’ll regret it,” she snapped back.

Magnus reclined in the creaky office chair where he sat beside the double entry doors to the crematorium. His lanky legs stretched beneath the beat-up metal desk, and his size fourteen dress shoes cannoned against the back panel. “We’re running out of time,” he said, then anxiously swiveled in his chair and peeked over his shoulder at the cardboard casket that held Thomas “Tommy” Todd.

Still pacing, Regina ignored her uncle and hit the speed dial for her brother yet again, sure he’d give in to her persistence. With the receiver to her ear, her body tensed to each subsequent ring. Then all at once, she hurled the phone against the door beside Magnus. It crashed into pieces on the floor. “Ahhh! Damn voicemail!”

Magnus lurched forward over the workstation on the desk, both dodging the phone and resuming his effort to prepare the cremation chamber for Tommy’s body. He tapped at the keyboard with his index fingers and thought to rebuke his niece’s temper tantrum. Oh, how angry she could get though. Especially considering her habit of believing she knew what was best for other people. And there was a chance she had stopped taking her medication again. Better to let her vent, he thought.

He considered the crematorium a tranquil place, but he’d been handling the dead for a very long time. By most mourners’ standards it was a cold and eerie building that emanated the hundreds of souls that passed through its chamber. It also didn’t help that the room was industrial in design with white walls and harsh overhead florescent lighting. And the two shiny metal ovens that sat centered in the garage-like room reflected a haunting reminder of a visitor’s own mortality. Except for religious reasons or the occasional paranoid relatives, no one wanted to attend a cremation, including Piers.

As both Magnus and Regina already knew, the macabre venue was not the only reason for Piers’s absence. He loathed his father not just for abandoning him but also for refusing to give up custody of Regina after their mother killed herself and their unborn baby brother. Piers blamed their father for the deaths, for Regina’s depression, for his own anger issues, and generally anything else he could get away with blaming on the man. He always said that Tommy was the reason he had become a divorce and child custody attorney, wanting to help women escape the same fate as his mother and sister. Unfortunately, he was never able to save Regina from her co-dependency for the man he hated so passionately. It took Tommy’s death and his sister being left destitute and saddled with her father’s gambling debts to do that.

With a final key stroke, Magnus had finished setting the cremation cycle. “It’s time to put your father in the chamber,” he said.

“No, wait.” Regina scurried to the scattered pieces of the cell phone and dropped to her knees. “Not yet.” She sat back on her heels and picked up the parts, examining them as if they were pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. But it was hopelessly broken beyond repair. A momentary pang of grief made tears well up in her eyes. She shuddered and swallowed hard, then cast the pieces of the phone down in a huff. “I won’t cry for you,” she murmured.

Magnus stood over Regina momentarily before extending his hand. “It’s time, lass.”

She ignored his offer for help and sighed.

“Regina, it has to be done now or I’ll have to charge you for refrigeration.” Magnus hated how heartless he sounded. As it was, he had already stored Tommy’s body for free for the past three days and wouldn’t think to charge his niece for the cremation. Nor did he expect to see a dime from Piers. The business had to operate though, and at any minute Magnus expected the delivery of two teenage gang bangers, shot in a drive by, from the Arapahoe County Morgue, and an elderly grandmother lay in the second refrigerator unit, waiting her turn in the cremation chamber. Then there were the almost nightly deliveries he didn’t want his niece to know about. After dark, Magnus served a clientele condemned to oblivion by his Mistress.

“Regina.” Magnus wiggled his fingers, hoping his niece would accept his second invitation for help. And she did. With her eyes staring down at the floor, Regina raised her arm. Magnus obliged her by wrapping her hand within his lengthy fingers and lifting her to her feet, where he towered over her by more than a foot. She pulled her black t-shirt down over her exposed stomach while Magnus tussled her short and messy black locks. She pushed his hands away and whined.

“You’re such a pretty girl,” said Magnus, his Scottish brogue stronger than normal. “Why do you hide behind the gloomy black?”

Regina rolled her dark painted eyes at her uncle and exhaled, “Tsk”. Still facing Magnus, she stepped in towards him for half a second before pulling away. “I suppose we should get it over with.”

Simultaneously, Magnus and Regina turned towards the cardboard casket where Tommy Todd rested. Inside the corrugated walls, the man’s cold body temperature continued to rise, worrying Magnus. Time was running short and he had other orders to carry out. He had to act fast, before his niece found another reason to stall the cremation.

Magnus hurried to the lift table and jerked it backwards. Unfortunately he had made the mistake of not strapping down the casket. The thing was sliding to and fro across the table’s rollers and Magnus had to apply pressure on the top of the box, causing it to dent. He nervously held it in place, trying not to collapse it further inward, while praying silently to himself that the jarring would not rouse Tommy.

Yellow tape on the floor guided the way to the entry point of the chamber, but in his hectic state Magnus sent the lift table on a collision course with the door to the cremation chamber. When the two collided, Regina twitched and moaned. “Good thing he’s dead,” she said with a titter.

Magnus frowned until he turned and saw that his niece was clutching her heart. “You don’t have to stay for this.”

“Yes I do.”

The casket was still below the level of the oven door, and Magnus needed to adjust the lift table higher so he could push it into the opening. He worked a crank on the side of the table bringing it slightly above the bottom lip of the door. Now that it was in place, he pressed a green button on the control panel and the door slid silently open, washing the room in a sudden wave of heat, and revealing the wavering gray interior of the oven. Ignoring the heat, Magnus pushed the casket forward over the rollers until it tipped suddenly as the weight passed the fulcrum and the casket grated noisily on the rough surface of the oven floor. As it cleared the rollers and ground to a stop, there were two loud thumps from the casket that shook the cardboard and startled both Magnus and Regina.

“What was that?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Trying not to look alarmed, Magnus gave the casket one last shove before it settled in place, the edges of the cardboard already smoking where they met the hot fire brick. “Nothing to worry about,” he lied. “Just the body settling.”

Just as Magnus hit the button to close the chamber door, Tommy Todd’s reflexes jerked his knees upwards, grazing the top of the box and forcing the lid half off the container, before the whole thing was hidden by the smooth descent of the thick metal door.

Regina gaped at the sight, mortified by the thought of her father alive inside the oven when the flames started. “That wasn’t settling.” She rushed to the cremation chamber and placed the palms of her hands on the uncomfortably warm metal door. ”Open it!”

He lied again. “It’s locked.”

“So, unlock it.”

“I can’t. It’s too late.”

“What do you mean you can’t open it?” She beat her fists on the door as she cried, “There has to be some kind of safety release on this thing.”

His voice cold, “This isn’t like the old manual oven, Regina. This one is all computer controlled. The door is locked and sealed to ensure proper environmental controls.”

“But…Daddy.” Regina turned and approached her uncle, where he stood beside a control panel. “He’s, alive!”

She reached for a red button labeled “Emergency Stop,” Magnus caught her hand before she could press it. She then reached with her other hand and he caught that one as well.

“Regina. Do you believe I would place a live person in the chamber?”

“No. But. The lid.”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “He’s gone, Regina. Dead!”

A high-pitched squeal escaped her diaphragm as she bowed her head into her hands.

Magnus took her in his arms and squeezed her tight for what seemed like an eternity. When they finally broke their embrace, he kissed her forehead gently, then put his arm around her shoulder and guided her towards the exit. He looked back at the cold, sanitary face of the oven that hid the hellish heat within that was, even now, consuming Tommy Todd. His heart ached for Regina, but he felt no regrets.