He patted my hand gentlemanly and guided me to a single, rich mahogany door. “I’m terribly flattered, really. And I couldn’t stand another moment watching the caliph drool all over your hand. But, although I hope you’ll accept something of your choice from my liquor cabinet, it’s merely your company, not your delightful figure, I look forward to tonight.”
“You may be disappointed in its limitations, Mr. Kolcheck.”
“Ivan, please. And I very much doubt that. You’ve an innate instinct for beauty, Miss Smith—both the inner and outer kind--I can sense it. You’d be—amazed at my ability to sense things.”
“But you don’t quite trust me.”
He turned from the door knob with a surprised expression.
“You were about to say ‘appalled,’ not ‘amazed.’”
For an instant the vampire’s eyes narrowed…then lit bright with delight. “You see! Perceptive! Instinctual! Miss Smith, I’m on the verge of becoming quite cross with you!”
“Cross?’
He pushed inward, grinning handsomely. “I’m always cross with people more perceptive than I am! Well, then! Here we are! Small but functional!”
It wasn’t that small.
And it was a hell of a lot more that merely functional, with its massive old world fireplace (working), old world furnishings, old world élan, not to mention Ivan’s old world mannerisms and speech affectation. I got the feeling he was heading in some definite direction; like backward, to the old world. Or wished he could, anyway.
No wonder they called him The Prince of Vampires—he thought he was living in the times of Vlad the Impaler…as opposed to just being a kid from Kansas bitten only a few years ago by a woman named Alicia. But I had to admit he brought it off well; it was even kind of infectious. If that’s the right word.
He shut the heavy door behind us, locked it, and gestured toward an ornate French Provincial divan. “What are you drinking, Miss Smith?”
There was a distant drumming sound in my ears. I felt suddenly very much the helpless fly in Kolcheck’s patiently suave web. I always thought that term ‘knocking knees’ was a cliché. It isn’t.
I couldn’t really sit, not in that outfit. Couldn’t do much of anything but stand there in the middle of the room on the priceless Persian rug and wonder how the hell I’d gotten myself into this.
But I knew, of course. And felt a wedge of disappointment at not seeing Clancy up there in the apartment with us, as The Count had implied.
Ivan came toward me proffering a beautiful crystal champagne glass with the thinnest stem I’d ever seen. It looked like an art piece itself. The blood red contents I wasn’t so sure about.
“Bavarian brandy,” he grinned. “One hundred years old!”
I tried to demure but he pressed the glass into my hand.
“Really, Mr. Kolcheck—“
“’Ivan’!”
“—really, Ivan, I couldn’t. It would be wasted on me.”
Or, it would ‘waste’ me, period.
“Nonsense. Drink up! You may well never get another chance!”
Not at all sure I liked the sound of that, I took a sip…and found to my everlasting delight I was not dead.
“Good?”
“It’s wonderful,” I told him.
“Isn’t it? Please. Sit down.”
If I do that I’ll pop and snap apart like a rubber band.
“I’d prefer to stand, thank-you.”
Ivan sighed, turned to place his own glass on the heavy, marble mantle, turned back to appraise me. “As you wish.”
He said nothing for a while then, just stared silently at me.
It was beyond unnerving.
I did everything I could to cover the tremble in my voice. “What was it you felt you needed my total lack of expertise about, Mr. Kolcheck? Ivan.”
He continued to stare at me with that small, cryptic smile for another few nerve-wracking moments.
Finally: “Well, I’ll tell you, Miss—‘Smith’ was it?”
“You can call me Edwina.”
Ivan Kolcheck shook his head slowly, smile going abruptly wry. “I don’t think so.”
I swallowed. “Pardon?”
Kolcheck heaved a very big sigh from a very respectable chest. “Miss Smith, I need your unabashed opinion on a subject very important to me. Your complete and unbiased candor.”
I shrugged confusion. “You have it.”
He watched me intently. “Truly?”
“Absolutely.
He nodded. “I believe you. So, why don’t you stop strangling your larynx with that ridiculous falsetto while mincing about the place like a woman? I know your little secret, sir…knew it the moment I set eyes on you!”
My knees had stopped knocking.
They’d turned to water.
Nevertheless, I managed two steps backwards to the door.
Mitzi will jump out from behind a piece of furniture any second now! I kept telling myself, she ll jump out and save my life!
But she didn’t.
My back hit the door, sloshing the drink in my hand.
“It’s locked, Ed,” Ivan purred, holding up the ancient brass key.
He started toward me. “May I call you ‘Ed’?”
FIFTEEN
He could call me anything he liked.
He could call me an idiot, he could call me Boy George, he could call me Ishmael, but I really wished he hadn’t called me ‘Ed.”
“T-The name is Edwina,” I burbled, so rattled I totally forgot to use the falsetto.
The Prince of Vampires smiled amusement, picked up his own red glass again, then set it back. That great line from Bela Lugosi’s first Dracula outing flashed through my mind: “I never drink…wine!” Just high test hemoglobin.
Well, Edwina, I thought, this is it, old kid.
Got fired from your job on the Topeka paper, drove all the way to KC, trashed a hotel room, and then on here to Chicago to rescue Clancy, the only woman in your life you’ve ever loved, and you get yourself trapped by the greatest vampire in modern history in his little upstairs apartment because of a stupid outfit and wig a blind man could detect. I could imagine the morning headlines, but I really didn’t want to think about them.
There are lots of ways I’d pictured my last moments over the years—I guess we’ve all done that—but dying in a pink dress wasn’t one of them.
What would poor Mitzi have them put on my tombstone? I thought of W.C. Field’s epitaph: All things considered—I’d rather be in Philadelphia.
And then Ivan was on me.
But not yet, thankfully, at my throat.
To my astonishment he had an almost compassionate look around his eyes—or as close as Ivan could ever come to one.
“You look…embarrassed,” he said gently.
Really? He could see that through the blinding fear?
I stiffened against the door, tried to imagine myself magically melting through it. “H-How did you know?” I quaked, buying time.
The Vampire Prince shrugged, cupped my cheek with a hand carved from ice. “I simply assume, ‘Edwina’ being the feminine for ‘Ed’—‘Ed” the diminutive of Edward. Did I assume wrong? Do they call you by another name?”
My mind was on overdrive.
“You’d be surprised,” I stalled.
The vampire’s face went stern as he took my jaw firmly in his powerful hand; I imagined an eggshell imploding. “Don’t!” he admonished hissing. “Never be ashamed of what we are! I may look a few years younger than you, my friend, but believe me I have carried more dark secrets within me than you can imagine!” And he squeezed my mouth into pursed lips for emphasis.
“H-Have you?” I gulped.
The Prince snorted derisively, let go my cheeks and paced about the room. “’Deviant’ ‘Transvestite’! ‘Faggot!’! Oh yes, I’ve known the cruel brands, the whispered snickers, the glances askance! From the age of seven, I’ve endured them!”
He turned on the Persian ru
g and nodded wistful hatred at me. “Three times I tried to do away with myself!” And he shoved up a sleeve, turned up his wrist, revealed long, ugly scars adorning his veins.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
The vampires scoffed, buttoning his sleeve. “He was no help to me, no help whatsoever! Please tell me you’re not a Christian!”
At the moment I wished with all my heart I was. I sighed indecisively. “I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what I am…”
Ivan held up a sympathetic hand. “Not surprising. I understand. Don’t worry about it. Worry only about what you’re not, what you musn’t be! And that is ashamed!”
My mind was still catching up to exactly what it was we were discussing.
The Prince refilled my trembling glass. I knocked it back in one gulp. I’m not a connoisseur, but that stuff was incredible. Its warmth spread through me like rocket fuel, easing some of the shaking.
“We must accept what we are,” Kolcheck was saying, recapping the cut glass decanter, “no matter what the rest of the world thinks. We must be proud. We must be strong.”
I nodded companionably. “Where did you gain such…confidence? May I ask?”
He smiled from the liquor cabinet. “Would you believe it? A woman!”
“Oh?”
He grinned wider, nodding rapidly from some happy memory. “A beautiful vision from the old country…the very old country. She was my mentor, I her student. In one flashing moment of the most exquisite pain and pleasure, she taught me how to look at the world in whole new, wondrously exciting light.” He made an amused sound. “Or should I say, ‘dark’? I owe her an eternity of gratitude.”
My hand was moving slowly behind me, fishing for the knob, finally finding it, turning it hopefully.
Yep. Locked. “What happened to her?”
The Prince’s face went dark, haunted. He looked away quickly. “I proved…too apt a pupil, I’m afraid. The ward became the mentor. We went our separate ways. To our separate purposes.” He chuckled ruefully. “Actually, the devil being in the details, our purposes were not unalike. Only the means differed. In the end, I was obliged to…”
His eyes drifted and his mind went somewhere else a moment.
But only a moment.
“…she died, I’m afraid, while still opposing my ideals. A shame in its own way. She was very capable, very beautiful.”
“I’m sorry. May I ask her name?”
His eyes drifted again for a moment. “Alicia…”
There was an awkward silence.
Then the vampire seemed to snap out of it. And came striding powerfully toward me.
“But enough of me. What’s important now is that, ‘Ed,’ or ‘Edwina,’ it makes no more difference to me than how you dress. When I look into your eyes I see a troubled soul…one searching for something or someone…perhaps himself. In any case, a kindred spirit. Someone I’d like to help, if you’ll allow me.”
“Help?”
He cupped my cheek again, that graveyard chill. “There’s a world out there beyond your imagination, Edwina. I could show you things, teach you things more seductively secretive than even my own mentor knew. Do you fear death?”
My hand twitched unconsciously for the knob again. “Well…don’t we all?”
The Prince smiled past his well retracted incisors. “Not all of us.”
I cleared my throat. “Uh…are you talking some kind of religious experience?”
Stupid! I thought, that will only incense him!
But he only chuckled softly. “If you like. But more all-powerful, more all-consuming than any religion you’ve ever studied…yet more ancient than any man has known. Join me, Edwina—or whatever you choose to call yourself—and I offer you an eternity beyond that of this plane!”
My mind went blank.
I could think of absolutely no response.
“My. Well! That’s very… I mean, I’ve been offered a lot in my life, but never eternity.”
“You have my word, Edwina. It’s a very private, very special organization.”
That was comforting. “Uh-huh… I’ll bet! Uh, are we talking medical benefits?”
He chuckled. “You’re skeptical. That’s good! One should be skeptical these days.”
He paced back across the rug again. “Freshen your drink?”
“Thanks, no.”
The Prince stuck his hands in his front pockets, studied me a moment. “I know very little about you…”
I must have looked uneasy. Ivan held up his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to pry. You’ll tell me when you’re ready.”
“If I’m ready.”
He bowed. “Fair enough. I also don’t know how long you’ve been in Chicago, how much you know about me. What do you know, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“Enough to know that asking too much about Ivan Kolcheck may not always be a…healthy thing.”
He chuckled softly again, as if modest. “Like all powerful Chicago men before me I’ve had, at times, been obliged to enlist force in accomplishing my goals.”
“’Powerful Chicago men before you’. Like Mayor Daily?”
“Perhaps.”
“—or Al Capone?”
That was stupid. Kolcheck’s eyes narrowed just the slightest. Then went pleasant again. “Some might think you were deliberately insulting me, Miss Smith.”
I nodded, boxed in. “But what do we care what others think, right? A man is known for his kindness, but remembered for his enemies.”
Now the smile was back. “So true. Who said that?”
“I don’t know. Churchill?”
“In any case, I’ve had men destroyed for saying less.”
“Like Hitler?”
“You can’t insult me with Hitler, Miss Smith, he was one of my heroes.”
That incensed me enough to actually push away a bit from the door. “You’re anti-Semitic?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, please, not that foolishness. That was lunacy. I was speaking of his capacity as a leader, a strategist.”
“Like Napoleon?”
Ivan wagged his finger. “Admittedly, both were overly ambitious. Ego-driven. Always a mistake.”
I shrugged. “’Absolute power’…”
“Exactly. But this is the 21st Century!”
“The age of the Terrorist?”
“The age of the computer!”
“Ah!”
He came toward me again. “Yes, I’ve driven men to their knees before. Listened to their futile begging. But only my enemies. But not people like you, Edwina…you are different.”
“Am I? How do you know?”
He hesitated only a discreet instant. “When you’ve…come as far as I have in my beliefs, you get a sense about people and things.”
“Things.”
“I like you, Edwina—Ed. And I don’t like many. I could easily force you to join my private little club as I think you must know. But I’d rather it be your own idea.”
“Why?”
That seemed to throw him for a moment. “’Trust’ is such an over-used word. Perhaps a meaningless word, these days. Call it…curiosity.”
“Which killed the cat.”
“Curiosity about whether two beings from completely different backgrounds, completely different planets almost, can still be comrades.”
“Friends. But isn’t friendship usually earned?”
“Yes. Something I’ll have to learn. Something maybe you can teach me.”
I was out of stalling tactics. “And if I say no?”
Why did I have to ask that?
The Prince shrugged affably. “I go back to what I do and you go back to wherever you came from. No harm no foul, as they say.”
“Your word? Of honor?”
“There can be honor, my friend, even among thieves. What do you say?”
Before I could reply I was shocked out of my senses from an urgent knocking at my back.
“Avon calling!” Mitzi anno
unced clearly in my head, and my heart leapt for joy.
The Prince bowed. “Excuse me…”
I stared at him. “For what?”
He gestured politely. “The door.”
“Oh!” I moved aside. He inserted the key, and opened it to a cheerily smiling Mansur, leading my pink poodle on her pink leash.
“Forgive the interruption, old friend,” from the caliph, consulting his watch, “but I have many arrangements to make and I believe we’ve still some small business to complete!” And he handed me the leash.
“Of course,” the Prince bowed, “we were just coming.”
On the stairway down I smiled pleasantly ahead of us but pushed my mind hard into Mitzi’s. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Don’t get excited, I knew where you were at all times. I thought I caught a whiff of Clancy and went to check it out when his imperial chubbiness here grabbed my leash and poured his intoxicating aftershave over my olfactory nerves. What about you? Ivan was showing you his etchings, was he?”
“He was about to show me the other side of eternity!”
“Really? You don’t smell turned.”
“Maybe crapping my panties covered the odor!”
“No shit, in the middle of his big uptown soirée he tried to suck your neck?”
“I don’t think it was my neck.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, my! Ivan’s gay? But your dress—
“Didn’t work, Mitzi! Clearly!”
“You don’t have to shout, Edward! Attending this carnival in drag wasn’t my idea in the first place! What about Clancy?”
“I didn’t see her.”
“Uh-oh. That’s not good. Eddie.”
I sighed as Ivan took my arm and guided me back into the party. “Not much about this evening has been! The word ‘disaster’ comes to mind.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mitzi cheer-led, “I finally got past his private insect repellent to sniff the real caliph. He still reeks—but! Did I mention he’s a vampire?”
I almost stumbled on the stairs. “Oh my God! They’ve invaded the middle east?”
“Afraid so. No wonder he and Ivan are so cozy, huh? More trouble for an already troubled world. Assholes. Why is it always the ones with the oil?”
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