Free Queen Of Blood by Bryan Smith

two-year-old e-mail from Dream
     Weaver. She read through it again, even though she knew the words by heart. And she felt again the familiar stab of ridiculous
     jealousy. Ridiculous because the woman seemed to be gone from Chad’s life forever. And doubly ridiculous given the true nature
     of her own relationship with Chad.
    But the feeling was there nonetheless.
    The note read:

    Chad,

    Yes, I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. Yes, I know you’re worried. I can tell because there’s about a gazillion e-mails jamming my inbox. I don’t even need to read them. The subject headers tell me all I need to know.

    Sorry if that sounds cold. Sorry if I sound like a bitch. But you need to let go and move on with your life. Stop pining for me, because I’m telling you right now, once and for all, I am never coming back.

    I don’t say these things to hurt you. I honestly don’t. It hurts me to say them this way. I’m trying to be forceful and firm—yes, bitchy—because I need you to accept the way things are. What we had is broken and cannot be fixed. I’m broken. I love you with all my heart, more than I could ever love anyone else, but our lives are on very different paths.

    Paths, Chad, that will never cross again.

    This is the last time you will ever hear from me. Please don’t reply to this message. I’m cancelling this account and it will just bounce back to you.

    Have a nice life, Chad. Please find someone nice and forget about me.

    Goodbye,

    Dream

    Allyson closed the e-mail and clicked out of Chad’s AOL account.
    Dream Weaver . As usual, Allyson’s blood boiled at the thought of that gorgeous woman and her ridiculous name. That fucking cunt. Dream had put Chad through so much drama and strife. He always swore he was over her. But why, then, would he continue to
     save a two-year-old e-mail?
    Cunt. Fucking cunt.
    She’d been asked to keep an eye out for her, too. She wished the bitch had been the one to show up tonight. She would’ve called hell down on her without a second thought. But she’d been told from the
     beginning that Lazarus, as they still called him, was far more likely to one day grace Chad’s door. And…
    Allyson frowned.
    Wait a minute…
    Chad’s name for the elusive Lazarus was Jim. It didn’t require a lot of thought to conclude that Jim was far more likely the
     man’s real name. Allyson clicked over to Google Web search and entered the following:

    “Lazarus Jim House of Blood”

    She clicked on the first search result, a two-year-old Chattanooga Herald story that recounted everything then known about what had happened at that remote mountain house. One paragraph stood out
     immediately. It told of the wild Internet speculation about the true identities of the men known as the Master and Lazarus.
     One theory in particular made Allyson gasp. She’d heard it before, of course, but had forgotten about it or dismissed it as
     obvious nonsense.
    Now, however, she wasn’t so sure.
    She clicked back over to the image search tool and with trembling fingers typed in the name of a dead rock star. The images
     of this man were plentiful. She scrolled through them before clicking on a thumbnail image of the man at his most grizzled-looking.
     His face was bloated from alcohol overindulgence. His hair was a big brown mane and he had a thick, bushy beard. The hair
     was shorter now and the beard was gone, but the penetrating eyes and high cheekbones were the same.
    “Fuck—”
    Jim. Lazarus. That voice…no wonder it’d seemed so naggingly familiar.
    Allyson clicked out of the browser window and closed the laptop. She sat there in a state of numb astonishment for several
     more minutes.
    Then a noise from outside the house—a metallic thunk—snapped her out of it. She set the laptop on the coffee table and surged
     to her feet, her heart thumping in her chest as she moved hurriedly through the living room and into the foyer. Adjacent to
     the foyer was a small