Hello my name is Siddha Lee Saint James, and I am an addict. I am addicted to emotional pain and trauma, I am a masochist. The girl who was once the perpetual victim, and I have just returned home after a twenty six year stint as a Vampire Hunter.
I have scars all over my body from the war I fought, a war most of the world chooses to ignore, largely because it’s easier. I am a member of the Society of Kris, a student of the Elders who ended the fucking war using majick, and reason over stakes and knives.
I was stationed in Canada, Surrey, British Columbia, no fucking less, what a shit storm let me tell you.
I’m rubbing my neck as I write this, remembering where a Vampire laid his lips, came within inches of killing me and chose not to, even as he fed off of my pain and humiliation.
I’m home now, on the Plantation, a place that my ancestors had once worked as slaves, a place that is now owned by the first Kris Creole Black family of Lafayette Louisiana, the garden is in full bloom here, the roses are a particulate shade of “rosy”.
The children of my cousins are playing in the pond, I can hear them from where I sit on the back veranda, shaded from the heat of the Louisiana sun by the balcony of the floor above.
There are four floors to the main plantation house, I live on the first, my family thinks I sleep in the fancy bedroom on the third floor where they all sleep, but I stay on the first.
In case they come for me, the Vampires…in case they come for my family, in case they figured out how to find me. Now that they are a part of this world they will spread like a plague, and there just aren’t enough of us Guardians to stop them.
But here I am at home, finally, resting from the war, a cease fire called between the Kris and the Vampires.
My designation as an official Kris Royal Guardian protects my family, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t come for me. I pissed them off by killing their Master, Jonah Kingston, slit his throat with a silver knife and watched that Vampire bitch burn like birch.
I know I am suffering from PTSD and I don’t blame myself, but at the same time, I wonder what I could have done differently. He had gone after the Queen’s Granddaughter, I couldn’t say no to protecting an innocent child, especially after…he’d had another that he’d fed on for years. Sucked the life out of children like they didn’t matter, that’s what Master Vampires do. They choose the youngest and most “succulent” of the population to feed on.
We stopped him, but at great cost, and now I am sitting here in this palace, wondering what I am supposed to do with myself.
My Auntie Petra keeps telling me to relax, to enjoy being home, they are happy to have me, and I am thrilled to be here, but I still feel like this isn’t over. I still feel like there is no way that I just get to walk away after everything I’ve been through and done.
They ordered me a new bed, I snuck it downstairs when they went to church, I don’t go to church…I don’t go anywhere, so they bring people to me. I’ve become quite clever at making myself invisible in the six months since I’ve been home.
I feel like a character at the end of the book, you’ve finished reading me, and you’re wondering what happens next…that’s me…I’m that character you’re wondering about, and I am wondering the same thing, “What the fuck happens next?”
Is this it? I just get to be free from Vampires, Demons and Witches opening up hell dimensions? I’m fucking done? No one putting guns to my head? Or feeding off my pain? No one making deals in the shadows for my life? No one trying to fucking kill me?
I don’t know what to do with that information. I know I’m supposed to be Big Bad Siddha Lee Saint James, but I am a human…sort of, okay I’m a Witch, but still I’m a human Witch, if I can’t be vulnerable here, where can I be?
So here I am at home in this place I have spent the last twenty years trying to get back to, my Aunties are in the same kitchen their ancestors used preparing for Sunday Bbq where the county will join us for homemade Louisiana food while once again they try to find me a man.
I forgot that Black women like their children married, my mother hasn’t spoken a word since I’ve come home. She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing, she’ll talk when she’s ready, I understand, because I know she fought in the same war.
We lost Sugar in the fight, she’s still in Surrey….we lost Deacon, and Isobella, Elizabeth too, so many gone, off to their corners of the world, returned to where they came from to heal the wounds of the war. The Light Bringer’s came and they kicked our asses, but we kicked pretty hard back.
New friends were found and lost, love and epic experiences, and now I am home waiting to meet the new gentleman in town that the Aunties are all excited about. I am hesitant to stick around, but they made me promise I would at least say hello.
They expect me to dress up, for fuck sakes, I just want to sleep. I want to sleep until it doesn’t hurt anymore, I found a guy in town that has decent weed, that’s helped, but Auntie says if I smoke too much my eyes will turn green.
That’s probably not true, but I keep trying because how cool would that be?
I might be a little high, but there’s nothing else to do around here. No Vampires to slay, no Demons with their gross orgies and they’re werewolf companions, no lawyers that I have to deal with, because Auntie Suzette is taking care of that stuff for me.
The Elders paid me a pretty sum for my “help” as they call it, and my father unlocked a trust fund I didn’t know I had, money isn’t an issue for me anymore…it’s hard to get used to being called “Miss Siddha”, by servants that look just like me.
It’s hard to believe that I just get to live my life my way now, because for so long that wasn’t an option….and yet here the fuck I am.
I don’t know what’s next, but apparently I have to meet this Jason guy..so I am going to do that before I sneak off to the tree house and get high again.
Chaddle later,
Siddha Lee Saint James
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 