“I’m good,” her cousin answered flatly.
Arianna glanced over to the banquette where Krystal was still poking at her salad. Something had to be bothering her—she’d hardly said anything more than a one- or two-word sentence in response to Arianna’s questions about how her day was, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the food causing her surliness. The girl had devoured the same salad several nights ago, and the panini wasn’t made with anything weird. Arianna picked up her glass of wine and slid in on the opposite side of the table.
“So you want to tell me what’s wrong?”
Krystal didn’t look up from her plate. She hid behind those brown curls covering her face as if she didn’t care, which Arianna knew was far from the truth.
“Come on. You can talk to me. What’s going on?”
The girl still didn’t answer, so Arianna continued. “Is it something to do with Sarah or one of your friends back home?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Arianna touched her sandwich, but it was still too hot to eat. The melted cheese would scorch the roof of her mouth. She took a bite of the salad, instead. “Is it your mom? Because if it is, you can tell me anything, Krystal. I promise.” Ever since Arianna’s mother died, Krystal’s mom, her mom’s twin, had had issues. First it was alcohol then prescription meds. She’d been in and out of rehab for years.
Krystal smashed a piece of feta cheese from the salad with her fork. “No, it’s not about Mom, either.”
Then what could be bothering her? Arianna had started to lift the glass to take a sip, when she set it back down again. “Listen, I’m not your mom. I’m your cousin. That basically means we’re like sisters, only it’s waaaay cooler. You can tell me anything. What am I going to do, ground you? Well…I guess technically I could, but I’m not going to. Come on, talk to me.”
Krystal sighed heavily and dropped her fork with a clank. “It’s my phone. The one you just got me. I—I…” When she looked up from her plate, tears glistened in her eyes. “I lost it. I’m sorry, Ari, I didn’t mean it. It’s like I had it one minute, then the next minute I didn’t.”
A knot quickly formed in her belly. How could they both lose their phones on the same day? She reached over and gave Krystal what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “When did you notice it was gone?” she asked cautiously.
“This morning. After you left for work. I looked everywhere. My backpack. My room. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it. I know it was expensive and everything. I’ll pay you back. I promise.”
Arianna’s heart melted at the girl’s distress over disappointing her. “It’s okay, Krystal, things like this happen. I know it wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, but I should’ve been more careful. I’m not used to having a phone to keep track of.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I just lost mine, as well. Can you believe it? Both on the same night.” Arianna tried to make it sound as if she thought it was a funny coincidence, but what were the chances of it happening to both of them simultaneously?
Krystal’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to remember exactly where I was the last time I saw it.”
“Me, too!” Looking relieved, the girl turned her attention to her sandwich.
Arianna watched her cousin take a bite and waited for her reaction; it was nice having someone to cook for, she decided. “How’s the food?”
“It’s good. What’s in this one? Cheese, tomato and…what’s the green stuff? Spinach?”
“No, basil. It’s like the ingredients from a pizza, but without the meat.” Arianna wiped her fingers on her napkin and took a sip from her wineglass. Although it was a cheap, peppery merlot from the grocery store, it was actually pretty decent. “Hey, do you remember that street fight we saw last night?”
Krystal frowned, thinking. “Um…yeah, kinda.”
“And the guy who broke up the fight and helped us home?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember him.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“No, sorry. He had big muscles and a huge tattoo on his arm.”
“He did? I don’t remember that.” She couldn’t exactly call the police and ask to speak to the officer with the tattoo. “Wasn’t he wearing a leather coat?”
“Not when you were kissing him. The tattoo was right here.” Krystal giggled and pointed to her biceps. “It was a colorful snake with fangs and…”
Fangs? Arianna couldn’t remember the point she was going to make.
As Krystal continued to talk about the fight and the guy with the tattoo, the kitchen felt as if it were spinning. Arianna pinched her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. She must have a serious case of vertigo or something. Then, to make matters worse, her stomach began to twist and roll.
Oh, God, she wasn’t going to vomit, was she? She grabbed the edge of the table, put a hand over her mouth. What was the deal? She hardly ever got sick. In fact, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been nauseous.
Krystal had said something about…fangs?
Calm down. I’m not getting sick. I feel perfectly fine. Just take a few deep breaths in and out and I’ll be back to normal.
Then, just as quickly as it came on, the nausea began to subside. But with it came a strange image in her memory. She saw a tall, muscular man—several men, actually—all with fangs. There was a scuffle. No, a fight. A really brutal one involving a body shriveling to dust and a really strange knife. It had a curved blade that flashed in the moonlight like a thousand tiny crystals. She would’ve liked to have seen it up close. The scene was like recalling a part from a movie you saw a long time ago and yet…that wasn’t quite right, either. The men’s faces were shadowed, their features indistinguishable, but they definitely had fangs.
Krystal was saying something she didn’t quite catch. Her voice was distorted, like it was coming from inside a tin can.
“What?”
“Are you okay? Do you want me to get you a glass of water? Or some crackers?”
Arianna opened her eyes, the sick feeling gone. Clearly, she’d dreamed about some really weird crap after what they’d witnessed last night. She’d always thought it was fascinating how the mind worked like that, trying to resolve problems at the subconscious level. She wondered what it meant that she’d been dreaming about vampires. Maybe all the research she’d done on topics for Paranormalish was catching up with her.
The guy last night was an undercover cop and had broken up a fight between two rival gang members. He was nice enough to drive them home…after she kissed him. Oh, good God. Her face heated again at the memory. She’d actually freaking kissed him. She quickly shoved the embarrassing image from her thoughts.
Krystal was staring at her, wide-eyed, a mixture of disappointment and resignation on her face. “Water and crackers always helps my mom when she’s had too much to drink. That and some Tylenol.”
Arianna smiled at her cousin. It had to be tough growing up with an alcoholic parent, where the child took on the role of being the responsible one. “Thanks, but that’s not it. I’ve only had a few sips of wine. Promise.” She got up from the table and dumped the wine from her glass down the drain. For good measure, she dumped out the rest of the bottle, too. “There. Just to be on the safe side. That was…weird.”
After they did the dishes and Krystal went to her room to do homework, Arianna turned on one of those reality cooking shows, grabbed her laptop, pulled out the scrap of paper from Carter and settled onto the couch. In a few clicks, she was into her cloud account.
As people were yelling at each other on TV, several rows of small picture thumbnails filled her screen. That’s strange. She didn’t remember taking so many photos last night at Blake’s house.
She cli
cked on the first image. She’d seen it before. It was Blake sitting in front of his grandmother’s afghan.
She clicked the last image. It was a dark, grainy picture of a sidewalk or road.
Okay. Delete.
She moused over the next one and clicked. Same thing, only this one showed the edge of a car’s bumper. A Jeep.
Like pocket-dialing, she must not have realized she was taking pictures. Delete.
These must be from the gang fight. Maybe there were some good ones earlier. She couldn’t remember taking any and yet…
She clicked on another one. When it filled the screen, her hands flew to her mouth.
It was the same sort of image she’d recalled at dinner. The photo was grainy because of the dim light and fog, but there was no mistaking the details. There was the man who had helped them home, the undercover cop, with that curved blade held high in the air, poised over another man on the ground. And they both had fangs.
Vampires? That was totally crazy. A chill snaked down her spine and lodged so deeply inside her that she wondered if she’d ever be warm again. But what else could they be? This made it pretty damn obvious.
She remembered now that when she kissed him, he’d seemed out of breath, as if he’d just physically exerted himself. Jesus. Killing someone with a blade would certainly do it you.
With shaky hands, she clicked through the rest of the photos, a dozen or so of them. Along with each one she looked at, her memory seemed to get clearer and clearer. When she got to the last one, her heart just about stopped. There was Krystal, standing next to a Jeep. The man had an urgent expression on his face and was pointing straight at the camera, as if urging her to go to where Arianna was standing.
Then, in one big rush, it came back to her. The shadows coming to life, Krystal being taken by two men, the other guy showing up.
They hadn’t witnessed gang members fighting. They were vampires. They had tried to take Krystal, but the other man, the one she had kissed, had saved her. Probably saved them both.
Holding the laptop, she jumped from the couch and headed to Krystal’s room, but she hesitated at the door. These photos were very graphic. If her cousin saw them, it might really upset her. As the parent figure in the girl’s life now, Arianna had to be conscious of things like that. She closed the computer, tucked it under her arm and knocked.
“Come in,” was the reply.
She leaned in the doorway. “Hey, do you remember two guys in a Jeep last night?”
“From the gang fight?”
“Um…yeah.”
Krystal scrunched up her brow, thinking. “No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t see them.”
“Do you remember seeing a Jeep at all?”
“Nope.”
Arianna exhaled slowly, trying to get her mind around all this. How could Krystal not remember standing next to the Jeep when Arianna had the proof right here?
“How about some weird shadows that—” she almost said materialized from the darkness, but changed her mind “—that, well…looked weird?”
Krystal shook her head. “Why?”
She pulled up one of the more innocuous pictures. “How about this guy? Does this bring up any strange memories?”
Krystal looked at the computer screen. “That’s the guy who broke up that knife fight. The guy you kissed.”
“Yeah, I know, but can you remember anything more?”
Krystal thought a moment before answering. “No, not really. Why?”
“No reason. Just curious.” She clutched her computer to her chest like a schoolbook. There was no way she’d tell Krystal that she’d survived a vampire attack. Or show her any of the other pictures. There were plenty of others without Krystal that she’d be able to post on her blog. Given all of this, she was soooo thankful now that she hadn’t told Krystal about Paranormalish. “I think I had one of those strange déjà-vu experiences you sometimes hear about. Must’ve been a weird dream I had last night. One of those really realistic ones.”
Krystal’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, I love when I remember a cool dream later.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
NORMALLY, VENTRA CAPELLI had a knack for knowing just the right outfit to wear in any situation. From soccer-mom chic in the suburbs when she faked a flat tire to emaciated hipster at an art gallery wanting a smoke, she knew how she needed to dress in order to throw any humans off guard. When she looked like them and they saw that she needed their help…well, it was like sugar water and flies. Or, now that she lived in the Pacific Northwest, beer and slugs.
But tonight she wasn’t sure if this simple black sheath, businesslike yet elegant, with a long strand of freshwater pearls, a few chunky bracelets and diamond studs in her ears would get her what she wanted. For that to happen, those present needed to see her as capable, serious and in control. They needed to trust that she could do the work her predecessor couldn’t.
As the elevator descended deeper into the depths of the Prague mountainside, she was thankful she’d thought to bring along hard copies of her documentation. Surrounded by all this rock, she doubted she’d get internet coverage on her tablet, although she’d brought the thing with her, as well.
With a smooth swoosh, the doors finally opened up to a large vestibule. She tucked her handbag under her arm and walked out.
She’d heard stories of how beautiful the Darkblood Alliance headquarters were, but nothing had prepared her for this. Her heels clicked on the marble flooring, the sound echoing off the chamber walls, emphasizing the vastness of the space. Various suspended sculptures hung from the frescoed ceiling, not unlike the Chihuly glass pieces in the lobby of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, a hotel she was intimately acquainted with. As she looked closer, however, she realized these weren’t glass works of art. They were made from various human bones.
From floor to ceiling, the walls were covered in human-skull sconces. The lower jaws had been removed, replaced instead by pairs of femur bones, making the skulls appear to be biting them. Unlike jack-o’-lanterns where light shone out the mouth, nasal cavity and eye sockets, each one of these skulls glowed, the bone sheer enough to be illuminated by the candle inside. Hanging down from the coved ceiling was a chandelier made from artfully arranged bones and skulls. The overall effect was a stunning visual representation of the power vampires would always have over humans.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” said a silky male voice behind her.
She spun around to see a thin, middle-age vampire standing behind a reception desk. She’d been so distracted by the beauty of this place that she hadn’t noticed him. She knew better than that. It wouldn’t happen again.
With his dark hair slicked back, he wore a hand-tailored Italian wool suit and a crisply starched white dress shirt. In an obvious display of individuality, a flamboyantly colored silk tie completed the look.
“Rumor has it that a monk in the Middle Ages collected the skeletons of humans who had died of the Black Plague. Forty thousand people, to be exact. Our people did the same. It’s quite a masterpiece, wouldn’t you agree?”
The Black Plague had changed everything. Until then, vampires had been at the top of the food chain, hunting and feeding from humans as they were meant to do. Humans at least had a small chance of surviving the Black Death, but for vampires, drinking the blood of an infected human was a death sentence. Their population dwindled to just a few pockets of survivors scattered throughout all of Europe—their race had almost been exterminated.
Fear of death had caused a significant philosophical change in vampire culture. As an act of self-preservation, vampires stopped draining and killing humans, learning, instead, that they could survive on much smaller amounts, and feedings could be stretched out over longer periods of time. They took only what they needed and left their human hosts alive. A complete denial of a
vampire’s true nature, she thought in disgust.
Most of their kind came to believe that humans and vampires could coexist peacefully, which led to the formation of the so-called Governing Council, those watchdog pigs who made her life and the lives of anyone who didn’t agree with them hell. Having fangs and needing blood didn’t mean you should make friends with your food. The mission of the Darkblood Alliance was to usher the culture back to its roots and live the way they were meant to live.
“Indeed, it is. The whole room is magnificent.”
She eyed a macabre piece located in one of the corners. Bones had been wired together to create one large, grotesque figure with three heads, its freakishly long arms and legs jutting out from the torso at odd angles.
“Like it?” the man asked.
“Yes, it’s amazing.”
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, though it’s not human.”
She raised her eyebrows. “It isn’t?”
“It’s made from the bones of the Master’s rivals.”
The new leader of the Alliance was obviously ruthless and cutthroat. Important qualities to have.
Apart from the natural aging process, the most common way for a vampire to die was from a stake through the heart, whereby the whole body would disintegrate. So these individuals must’ve met their end in some other fashion in which the bones had been preserved. Unflinchingly, she read the plaque on the wall, recognizing a paraphrased quote from Cervantes. A cat, a rat and a coward. Interesting, indeed.
The man laughed. “The Master does have a sense of humor.” Then he continued where he’d left off. “Of course, we’ve added to the collection over the years. In addition to this piece, there are a few others in the Master’s Chambers, which you’ll see next, but these are the oldest and most fragile.” Swinging his arm wide, he spoke with the passion of a museum curator, not a lowly receptionist, although Ventra understood that sometimes you had to befriend the help in order to get access to those in power.
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