Blessed

by Cynthia Leitich Smith

  As Kieren jogged away, I squared my shoulders, raised my chin, and, despite everything, reminded myself that if I ever had a chance to wear Mama’s wedding dress again, to wear it for real, Miz Morales could set me up with the best seamstress in Austin.

  As if I were an expected guest, I strolled around the back of the Victorian. The drive split into a V — one side leading into a spacious quad and the other along the far side of a barracks toward the woods beyond. A third HIGHWAY TO HELL sign with an arrow guided any would-be victims toward the back of the property, where the faux altar and real coffins from my nightmare awaited.

  Eight-foot-tall torches lit the compound quad. The delivery truck had been parked alongside the barn. Lush green grass blanketed the courtyard. Apparently, evil things didn’t believe in drought watering restrictions.

  In the smoky fog, it took me a moment to make him out. Bradley’s fair hair had gone totally white. He’d grown a beard to go along with the mustache. A glass of blood or maybe blood wine rested between his long fingers. He wore the elegant dark gray suit, the one he’d used for toasting at Sanguini’s, the one that made him look like Fred Astaire.

  Glancing from his wristwatches to me, he said, “Good evening, baby.”

  “Howdy, Brad.” My voice had wavered. Wearing Mama’s dress had been a mistake. It took him back to his fantasy, but it took me back to that night, too. I remembered shredding the white nightgown, butchering the iron twin bed frame. Now, here I was, like this, taking another step toward him. Freely and of my own will.

  On one hand, I was relieved not to be dealing with the count.

  On the other, I couldn’t help remembering Freddy’s warning about Sabine. The devil you know is still a devil.

  “It was Uncle Davidson, wasn’t it?” Let Brad think I’d come, at least in part, for answers. “He gave you Quincey Morris’s bowie knife.”

  “It went first to your father,” Brad replied, taking the bait. “After he died, your uncle stumbled onto the family history. I contacted him, pretending to be an antiques dealer. But he realized what I was. He delivered the knife in exchange for immortality.”

  I remembered Uncle D, facedown in his bed with a stake through his heart. How was that immortality? “And then he delivered me to you.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Brad assured me. “I saw you one day, laughing with Vaggio at Fat Lorenzo’s. I began watching you at home . . . school . . . the restaurant.” He smiled, wistful, and took a sip. “You had such zest, passion, sensuality. You gobbled up life.”

  A fitting expression from the former vampire chef. I’d once thought of him as the eternal who missed humanity so much that he fed it.

  Moving closer, I began again, “At the Wolf pack, you asked for my help —”

  “Did I?” He looked confused. “I lost myself for a while there.”

  Didn’t he understand what was happening? “You’re losing yourself now.”

  His head turned as warning howls rose into the night air.

  Damn, the wolf-form sentries had found Zachary.

  “What’s this?” Bradley asked, slamming his wineglass to the driveway, shattering it. “Friends of yours? Well, baby, I have friends of my own.”

  A vacant-looking crowd of young people flowed out of the barn, shuffling our way. It was hard to count through the fog, but I put the number at roughly fifty.

  “My personal blood supply,” he added, “but they’re more than that. I’ve blessed them. They’re my children now, and they — like you — will obey me.”

  So this was thrall from the outside, looking in. “They’re still human.”

  “Not for long,” Brad reminded me.

  I couldn’t help thinking of Aimee, still waiting with Freddy in the SUV.

  The zombie-like prisoners parted to reveal Kieren — kicking, yelling, trying to wrench free from two female vampires. I recognized them from my nightmare. They’d been the ones who had killed that little boy.

  Behind them, another female, carrying Kieren’s axe, marched in step with Harrison, who still had possession of his own bejeweled weapon.

  Harrison, who’d followed the power and changed sides.

  “The dog-faced boy!” Bradley exclaimed, sounding equally betrayed. “I thought I’d killed him in Michigan. I thought . . . Did I see him there?” He paused. “Didn’t I?”

  I could feel Brad’s rising anger and confusion. Once again, I felt what he felt. He hadn’t trusted my apparent surrender, but Kieren’s appearance had turned the ruse into an insult. I felt Brad’s obsessive desire, the way he wanted it to be between us — at times raunchy and rutting, at times romantic and refined.

  I saw myself as he viewed me: a trophy, a temptation, a distraction that he’d cursed again and again, even as he’d committed himself to winning my love.

  Worse, underneath it all lurked an unexpected sincerity, an appreciation of the kitchen banter we’d shared, a respect for my work ethic, an understanding of the losses I’d endured. An understanding of what loss meant.

  If only it weren’t for his rival — a mere boy, less than even human. A lowly beast. After the glory that Brad had offered, why else would I continue to refuse him — if not for another man? How could I make such a foolish mistake? Before I had a chance to fight it, I sympathized.

  “This time,” he promised, “I’ll cut out his mongrel heart and squeeze its last drop of blood into my own jaws.”

  Like he had in the castle courtyard, Bradley reached for me, only this time, he forced my lips to his, his tongue into my mouth, and his desire deeper into my mind. Then Brad’s hands cupped my hips as he lifted my body, and I instinctively wrapped my legs around his waist, not caring that we had an audience. Not caring that Kieren could see.

  Yanking aside a red ribbon strap, Brad briefly tore his lips from mine, only to slice his fangs into my bare shoulder. I felt twin streams of blood trickling and his tongue lapping and his teeth kneading the wounds. The punctures radiated pleasure, and pressing a hand to the back of his neck, I urged him on. It hadn’t been anything like this in the basement or the queen’s courtyard, and I knew he owned me now.

  After I wasn’t sure how long, through the bloody velvet bliss, I heard a distant rumbling growl, and then a woman’s frantic voice called, “Master!”

  We didn’t care. No one else mattered. I was beyond wanting anything but more.

  Then, without warning, Bradley raised his bloodstained face. “Who are you?” he demanded in an accented voice — Romanian? Hungarian? — that didn’t belong to him.

  He threw me to the grass. “How dare you presume to touch me?”

  Yanked from Brad’s thrall, I stared up at the famed Count Dracula.

  “You are not mine,” he said, sneering, and the feeling was mutual.

  Reaching for my still-bleeding shoulder, I began to tremble. My head throbbed worse than from any blood-wine hangover. I climbed, swaying, to my feet.

  Then the growling I’d heard earlier turned ferocious, and a woman’s severed head rolled by, trailing blood and bloody tissue. She’d been one of the vampires who’d captured Kieren.

  Harrison! He’d faked them out. He hadn’t betrayed us after all. And if his victim had been a neophyte, a salvageable soul, he didn’t give a damn.

  I searched the fog for Kieren and heard him whimper. He was shape-shifting. Even in the low moonlight, he’d nearly reached midtransformation, farther than he’d ever gone before. His ears had turned wolfish, and his T-shirt and cargo shorts tore as bones, ligaments, muscles strained and rearranged. Dracula called to the undead and infected alike. “Tear them to pieces!”

  As Harrison swung his axe again, the enthralled mob rushed me.

  “Zachary?” I called. Where was he?

  A bat careened over my head, tangling itself in my hair, raking my forehead with tiny claws, escaping before I could snatch it. Dracula, he was getting away!

  We’d failed. Not only that, but Brad had failed, too, and a far more hideous monster would pr
ofit from his demise. Until that moment, I’d refused to believe the worst would come. I thought of Aimee, Sergio, Yani, Mercedes, the mayor, and the rest — their lives and souls soon gone. The loud little boy who’d come to Sanguini’s on his fifth birthday and would be a demon before his sixth. The human world, the shifters, the underworld, all would suffer, and my best excuse for continuing my tainted existence was gone.

  I let my head fall, let the mob have me. A fist smacked into my jaw, another into my stomach. A hand grabbed my hair, yanking my head back, exposing my neck.

  I heard my grass-stained, virginal white dress — my mama’s dress — tear.

  I stared up into fog, silently begging for forgiveness and for Kieren’s life. What I wouldn’t have given to see the heavens, the moon and stars. What I wouldn’t have given to belong to heaven’s light. Blows rained down, and I welcomed the pain.

  Then the fog drifted, and I saw Zachary — in midair, his wings brilliant white — eclipsing the narrow moon. A boot slammed into my kneecap, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away. Blood dripped from scratches on the angel’s cheeks, from his fingertips. The sentries had savaged him with their teeth and claws. Now, high above, the holy weapon shook in his hands.

  A fist came at my eye, and I blocked it. Shoved away the woman yanking my hair, ignored the pain as she ripped some out. Broke free. “Zachary!”

  The Dracula bat reeled at the sight of him, tumbling from the sky — a spiral of shadows — and crashed in Brad’s human form on the bright green grass. He moaned, still conscious. A monster at midnight.

  A moment later, Zachary lost hold of his sword and, as it fell, he too careened downward. The horde would be on him next, tearing apart his wings.

  From my right, a vacant bruiser of a guy charged me — out of his mind, a helpless pawn, his only thought to kill. He’d somehow gotten ahold of Kieren’s axe.

  Then, through the fray, a wolf-form sentry leaped between me and the new threat. I didn’t understand why, not until he glanced back, his eyes yellow, intelligent, familiar.

  Kieren, coming to my defense. Kieren, who’d finally fully shifted into a magnificent black werewolf. Just in time to die.

  A split second before Kieren sprang into his own axe blade, the big guy lowered, then dropped it. He looked mystified at the blood on his hands.

  Someone screamed. The pretty young blonde who’d skipped up the highway to hell. She pointed to yet another decapitated vampire head, the second I’d counted so far.

  The infected backed off, unclenching their fists, returning to their senses.

  Backing toward his brother, Harrison brought his axe blade straight through yet another undead woman, splitting her in two at the waist before slicing off her head.

  Just then I heard Aimee’s and Freddy’s voices, calling to Zachary, who lay dazed on the ground. I’d known they wouldn’t stay in the SUV! They assumed positions on either side of the angel, protecting his fallen form with their holy-water rifles.

  Meanwhile, Zachary fought to prop himself on one elbow, and I briefly tracked his gaze to the gleaming sword lying just inches from my feet.

  “Baby . . .” Bradley stood to face me. The count had receded again. It wasn’t just the voice, the U.S. Midwestern versus Eastern European accent. It was in the way he held himself, the particular flavor of evil shining in his red eyes. “I know we have some issues to work out. But please tell me what’s happening.” He’d said it like I was his longtime girlfriend and we’d had a minor spat.

  “It’s the knives,” I explained as Kieren took a few steps back and forth, snarling. “Harker’s and Morris’s. You didn’t just bring back the full power of Dracula Prime. You brought back the count himself.”

  Brad’s smug expression disappeared.

  “He’s tearing you apart from inside,” I added, “taking over your mind and body.”

  Brad began pacing. “At the Wolf pack in Michigan,” he muttered, “that wasn’t me. That was him . . . that day and others . . . that night and others. Not me, him!”

  “Quincie!” Harrison tossed me the ornate axe. “Finish it!”

  I caught the handle of what had been Miranda’s regal battle-axe, grateful for my supernatural reflexes. Only problem? If I decapitated Bradley with it, the count might be able to take refuge in that new weapon, biding his time until yet another opportunity arose for him to return. Damn. What had he paid Lucifer to learn that trick?

  “Quincie, now!” shouted Aimee. “Now!”

  Bradley paused, shaking his crowded head. “I’d thought I was losing my mind, and I see that I was right. No, I’m not losing it; he’s taking it. I can feel him inside, rooting around, angling for an opportunity. But I can fight him, annihilate him. Find another, stronger spell. Kick his incorporeal ass before he owns my real one. I’ll do it for you, for us.” Brad threw out his arms and laughed. “I’ll save the whole damned world for you, baby. Is that what it’ll take? Then will you love me?”

  Until that moment I hadn’t been paying much attention to his ranting. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Everything for you! I’ve worked so hard to prove myself. I transformed your chintzy small-time ethnic restaurant into an international gothic sensation. I fed you my own blood, remade you, elevated you. I brought you back from the dead.”

  “First of all, not a turn-on. Second, you’re the one who killed me in the first place. And third, Don Juan” — I gestured to the crowd — “it’s not like you’re all that picky about who you curse with your blood.” Tightening my grip on the axe handle, I added, “Will I love you? Don’t you realize what you’ve done? You murdered Vaggio. You framed Kieren. You poisoned his dog. Made Mitch undead. Used my mama’s restaurant, which has never been in any way chintzy or small-time, to —”

  “For you,” Bradley said, pausing in place. “When I blessed you —”

  “Blessed? You did not bless me. You stalked me. Lied to me. Slipped unholy blood into my wine. Drugged me, kidnapped me. Took my life.

  “After all of your hypocritical talk about my own free will, you touched my body and mind when I couldn’t say no. Made me think I wanted to touch you. And, worst of all, you turned me into this thing, knowing that I’d pay for it with my immortal soul.”

  “We’re not puny humans,” Brad replied. “Our ways of love are —”

  “What you call love, I call evil, freakish, and deranged.” I couldn’t let him come back — not as Dracula, not as himself. God, what if I struck him — them — down, and the spell somehow managed to preserve both of their essences in the axe until they were freed again?

  My gaze fell to Kieren. A full-blown Wolf who loved me. A young man who’d finally managed to conquer his inner beast. Who’d struggled with himself but never doubted me, even when I doubted myself. Nothing could hurt more than letting him go, even if we’d be like Zachary and Miranda and reunite in heaven someday. But it was time. I let the axe fall from my hand, prepared to obliterate Brad-Dracula forever.

  No matter the price.

  Radiant — no other word could fully describe the holy weapon at my feet. Where the blade met the hilt, it flared into two gleaming gold wings. Wings like Zachary’s.

  Zachary, who’d warned me what would happen if I touched the sword. I’d have only a second, maybe three. And, after that, I’d be ash. But then again, how long did I really need? Just long enough to strike.

  “What’s all this fuss?” Bradley asked, ever the charmer. “I am your creator.”

  I hesitated at his words. My creator? Brad? I thought of Mama and Daddy, my grandparents Crimi and Morris, all the way back to my true Creator.

  It was then that everything made sense, that my insecurities fell away, that I realized who I was and what was really happening on heaven and earth and inside of me.

  I knew. No, better than that. Harder than that. I believed.

  “I chose you,” Bradley went on.

  I could feel him, trying to push his will against mine. And failing.<
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  As I reached for the blessed sword, Zachary, back on his feet, took Aimee’s hand and Freddy’s. Harrison, who’d joined them, reached for his brother’s shoulder. They bowed their heads, but Kieren’s gaze stayed fixed on the enemy.

  “I made you a superior being,” the monster added.

  When I closed my hand around it, the hilt felt as cool and welcoming as the silver-and-turquoise crucifix against my chest. I rose, drawing the angel’s weapon with one hand over my still-bleeding shoulder — grateful for the Grace.

  “Baby, don’t you see?” Brad finished. “I am your god.”

  With full faith that my aim was true, I let the sword fly. It flamed in midair and struck the Abomination, impaling the heart.

  “Baby?” Brad staggered back, and his annoyed, self-important expression transformed to horror as he . . . they . . . went up like a torch. Flames leaped thirty feet into the air. Black and blue smoke billowed. Once again, Bradley had underestimated me.

  I would never belong to him, to anyone, against my own free will.

  We had no time to celebrate. The wolf-form sentries had been closing in, heads low, saliva dripping. They had us surrounded. And there were so freaking many of them!

  “Zachary!” Harrison yelled. “The sentries are a lost cause. I’m ready. I am. Sabine said it — you can’t save us all. Do it, man! I beg you!”

  What was he shouting about?

  A blinding light poured from Zachary’s body. The word supernova crossed my mind, and I shielded my eyes from it. Against the sentries’ screams and howls of pain.

  I bent to draw Kieren close, at first to protect him and then, overjoyed, to more fully share the moment. Burying my fingers in his soft, damp fur, I felt surrounded by warmth and love, forgiveness and understanding. It came from the light. It was the light.

  And I felt it with my whole and unbroken soul.