Valerie wandered back upstairs and showered. It was like a spa with multiple showerheads massaging her every tense muscle. The shampoos and soaps smelled heavenly. She let the water wash the remains of sleep from her and enjoyed the privacy of having a bathroom all to herself. No kids or Charlie banging on the door to get in. No thin motel walls that let the amorous cries of love penetrate. No cars whizzing by or honking their horns, no people yelling just outside the window. It was peaceful.
She stepped out of the shower and wiped off the steamed mirror with a fluffy white towel and looked at herself in the full length mirror. Her skin was pale and flawless as always, moist from the shower. Her hair was slicked back and tucked behind her ears. From the line of her graceful neck to the soft curve of her shoulders down the slope of her perk breasts and over her flat stomach down her long legs to her little wiggling toes, she was completely and beautifully naked. She had no makeup to paint onto her face. No curlers for her hair. No form fitting underwear to wrestle on or dress to fasten around her waist. She didn’t even have to step into stiletto heels. It was as if she was looking at herself for the first time. Her violet eyes glowed as if they were on fire. Her pink lips curled by themselves in the mirror. The mirror reflected a woman, clean, uninhibited, and free. She was beautiful. Valerie saw strength in that woman. She may not know her yet, but she knew that reflection was the woman she wanted to be.
When she came out of the bathroom, her clothes had disappeared. In place of them was a dark blue robe lying on her bed which was now made with such perfection that it looked as if Valerie had never disturbed it. She wrapped herself in the terry cloth robe and went hunting for her clothes. Exploring the enchanted house, she passed Ethan’s room, his door ajar. She knew she shouldn’t snoop, but her curiosity got the best of her. She peeped in.
His room was huge, twice the size of hers. There was an entire wall of windows from floor to ceiling over looking the ocean. A balcony was attached where a telescope stood tilted towards the starry heavens. On the two flanking sage walls bookcases climbed to the ceiling only parting to make room for a huge desk that looked antique and heavy and well-loved. On the back wall he had a large platform bed in disarray. The wall behind the bed was covered in sketches and paintings—people, cities, landscapes, some only half completed, others finished. In the corner stood an easel and an array of paints. He was an artist. She never would have guessed it. There was also an acoustic guitar that looked as if it had seen better days. A musician too? she wondered. On the floor were gorgeous rust colored rugs. The room was warm and homey, lived-in, kind of like a beloved study.
He was seated at his desk in jeans and a green shirt hunched over some work at his desk which was covered in papers. A flat screen computer monitor was off and a bright modern desk lamp on.
“You can come in,” he said before she had a chance to knock.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said taking just a few steps into the room.
He turned around in his chair. “You’re not.” He seemed more relaxed here. Relaxed as Ethan was capable of, she supposed. She could still sense that his guard was up. “How are you? Did you sleep well?”
“Like a rock. It was as if I hadn’t slept in a month. But my clothes seemed to have disappeared,” she said pulling the robe tighter around her suddenly aware of her naked body beneath it.
Ethan gave a small smile. “Elaina. She’s the housekeeper. They miraculously reappear cleaned and pressed in about two hours.”
She nodded taking a couple more steps into the room, her eyes browsing his bookshelves. Lots of classics carefully cataloged by author and year. There was also poetry ranging from Donne to Frost to Dickinson. Anthologies of history: American, Irish, Italian, Egyptian, and more. Then there was a section dedicated to vampires: Byron, Stoker, Rice, Meyers.
“You can borrow one if you’d like. Humans have some pretty interesting ideas on us.”
“You’re quite the reader.”
“You have to spend eternity doing something.”
There were also clay sculptures on the shelves, miniatures of classics like The Discus Thrower, The Thinker, Venus de Milo and more. She assumed these were his work as well. He had mastered the human body.
“You’re quite the artist too.”
He shrugged. “You can only read for so long.”
“Amelia’s an artist. She’s quite good, I think. I never really had much talent for drawing.” She sat on the edge of his bed. “I always wanted to be an actress.”
“Still can. Look at Alessandro.”
She laughed lightly, but it wasn’t a light laugh, it was the verge of hysteria. “He said we could live here.”
“That sounds like Alessandro.”
“So me and my children just move in here? Then what? I fulfill my girlhood dream? On what stage? What do my children do? Who educates them? It feels like I’m going from one manufactured world to another.” She didn’t know why, but she felt tears bubbling beneath her exterior.
He moved from the desk chair and sat next to her on the bed. “No. You have choices here. If you don’t want to live here, don’t. Once we neutralize Venjamin, the world is yours. Alessandro and Jonathan will give you the tools and skills to survive.”
“Once we neutralize Venjamin. You make it sound so easy.”
“We both know it’s not going to be.”
She shut her eyes and breathed in deep. “I just met Alessandro and Jonathan last night and I know more about them than I know about you.” She felt as if she was tiptoeing on dangerous ground. She didn’t know if it was because she was sitting in a man’s room, a man who was not her husband, wearing nothing more than a robe, or if it was Ethan himself that was the danger. Either way, she knew she wanted to continue on. She wanted to know this man. And she didn’t care if it was right or wrong, safe or dangerous.
He shifted and put some space between them. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“How old are you?”
“Ninety-two. Not counting my human years.”
“Do you drink human blood?”
“Yes.”
“Why do they call you Thanatos?”
“I’m guessing you already know,” he said, a hardness entering his voice.
“He was the Greek god of death.”
“You like to read too.”
“Venjamin gave us a good education in Sangre Valley. At least on some subjects. Why do they call you Thanatos?” she reiterated.
“Because I’m a vampire.”
She stared at him with her large, intense violet eyes. With those eyes on him, he knew he would have to answer her.
“Vampires have different relationships with humans. Jonathan, for instance, buys into the symbiotic relationship. Gabriella is his human. She willingly lets him feed off of her and he does not take her life. They both benefit from the relationship.”
“What in the world does she get out of it?”
He smiled, a little nastily perhaps. “For a human, if we drink their blood slowly, it’s like an orgasm.”
She blushed despite herself. “So are they a couple?”
“He feeds only off of her. She lets no other vampire feed off of her. Beyond that, I don’t know. It’s their business. Most symbiotic relationships are romantic. Other vampires prefer to sneak bites of unsuspecting humans. This is Alessandro’s taste. He picks up a girl—or a guy—in his club, seduces them, and takes a taste. They’re drunk or high and generally don’t notice or at least don’t remember. Others drink donated blood. Others will only kill corrupted people, criminals, killers. Some like them young and beautiful. Some like only the innocents. Some just like the hunt or the fight.”
“And you?”
“None of the above. I drink only from the already dying,” and he nodded up at his wall of artwork. She carefully looked up to examine the pictures. Many of the human figures were homeless men and women passed out against buildings or huddled around a bonfire, paper-bagged bottles in hand. There were skeletal hookers on
street corners and junkies passed out in abandon buildings with needles still in their arms. All wretched souls in pain. “That’s why they call me Thanatos.”
She nodded, her eyes still on the wall’s artwork. She noticed one woman’s form repeated, her sketches often finished. She was petite and young with dark almond eyes, long black hair, a laughing smile. Her body danced without inhibition, laughed with tears, slept like an angel, lied naked unabashed, twirled in flowing skirts like a gypsy, the same woman again and again. Valerie knew better than to ask who she was. She turned her eyes back to Ethan who was watching her almost daring her to ask.
“Why the dying?”
“They taste better.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not.”
She stared at him not believing him.
“Do you condemn me too? Like you do your husband? All because I drink from humans.”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. I don’t know what I even am. Last night I had it explained to me better than ever before, and it only confused me. I killed a human to save Charlie’s life. A man who stopped to help me. I have no right to condemn anyone.”
Sensing no judgment from her, only her own guilt, he finally looked away from her, ashamed.
“How did you become a vampire?” she asked.
“You want my maker story?”
“Yes.”
It had been a long time since he had told this story to anyone. It still passed painfully from his lips, but he found himself wanting to tell her. He would have to start with the story of his human life first. How hard it was to believe that he had been human at one time. “My parents were immigrants from Ireland. They settled in Detroit, Michigan. At that time not a lot of people wanted to hire the Irish. My dad did odd jobs, drank a lot. He was a happy drunk most of the time, only abusive when money was really tight. He loved my mum madly, but had women on the side. My mum was a quiet woman, unaffectionate to both her husband and her children. She had given up on life a long time ago. In Ireland she had dreamed of being a singer. America had pummeled that dream. We kids loved for her to sing us to sleep but it was a rare treat. She cleaned rich people’s houses all day and had little energy left over for us. I had an older brother Trevor who was my best friend. He was a risk taker, big talker, liked the drink and the women. Ended up in prison for gambling, distributing alcohol, and petty theft. My two younger sisters, Nancy and Ellen, were hard workers but were tired of working hard. I couldn’t blame them. They married the first two men to come along. Nancy with a low life gambler, Ellen with a doctor. Then there was Johnny and Kelly. I didn’t know them, not really. They were just kids when I left.
“Me and Trevor wanted excitement, adventure, and fast easy money. Trevor knew a guy who could get us into a moonshine smuggling scheme from Canada. This was during Prohibition. As long as we remained small time, the gangs left us alone. And as long as we paid our bribes, the police left us alone too. It was nice having money for the first time in our lives. Trevor got too greedy though. He stopped greasing the right hands and was arrested. Once he was behind bars, I was lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life or myself. Spent a lot of time at the speakeasies that I had once delivered to. Drowned myself in liquor.
“One night this mysterious girl materialized mesmerizing all the men in the room. Out of all them, she asked me to dance. I had never seen anyone like her before. She was foreign. Even though she was immensely pale, she looked Latina. Small, barely five feet, every movement was a dance. She had these huge, dark almond eyes and long black hair that she always wore loose. She asked me why I was so sad. When I told her she laughed at me, told me I was silly, and that she could make me happy. I believed her. She would only meet me in the bars and never during the day. She refused to tell me what she did for work or anything about her family. All day I would sit on edge counting the seconds until the sun set and I could see her again. I ached for her as if I was going through a drug withdrawal. I called her my Snow White because she was so pale. She hated it. I was madly in love with her. Then one night she asked me if I’d spend eternity with her. I told her that I loved her and that I would marry her that very second if that’s what she wanted. She smiled mischievously at me and told me that she had something better in mind. That’s when she bit me.” He paused for a moment. “After the initial shock, it wasn’t so bad. I really would get to spend forever with the one I loved.”
“What was her name?” Valerie asked softly.
He looked up at her as if he had just woken up from a dream. “Malia.”
“Where is she now?”
“Dead.” His voice went cold and hard, detached.
“I’m sorry.”
“Vampire hunters cornered us one night. It was my fault. I was too happy. My guard wasn’t up like it should have been. I hadn’t realized that we had been followed. They knew what they were doing. No holy water or Christian prayers. I watched them stake her.”
“Ethan, I’m so sorry.”
“We only had thirty, forty years together. Malia believed that we had souls and that one day when we died for real—she never did believe in immortality—we would be reborn in new bodies and find each other again.”
“That’s one theory that I do like.”
“It’s a delusion,” he said standing up.
“Is that how you got your scars?”
“No.”
She could tell that that was a story she was not going to get tonight.
“Can I ask you something now?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“What happens when we get Charlie back?”
She stared up at this massive man with his hard blue eyes and heartbreaking story and knew he really wasn’t asking about her husband. He was asking about them—Ethan and Valerie. “He’s the father of my children. He will always be part of my life. And after everything Alessandro and Jonathan explained . . . I can’t hate him like I did. He was a victim just like the rest of us. But we never had what you and Malia did. I’m done pretending.”
He nodded.
“Mom! Moooom!” came calling from downstairs.
“I guess the kids are back from their shopping spree,” she said standing up. “Thank you for telling me your maker story.”
“Mom!”
He only nodded again.
She left him and found her two youngest in the living room with Gabriella and a pile of shopping bags.
“Mom! Look at all the cool stuff Gabriella bought us,” Harry said. “She got me video games for the computer. I spent most the day figuring it out. I couldn’t sleep. Have you been on the internet yet? It’s so cool. She also got us a basketball. She says we can set up a hoop outside.”
“I hope you got some clothes too.”
“Yes, but they’re just clothes,” he said.
“We picked up some things for you too,” Amelia said. “And she took me to an art store and got me supplies. She said Ethan draws and paints too.”
“I’ll be happy to show you around so you can pick out some stuff of your own,” Gabriella told her. “You should get a look around. Red Hook is a sweet little town. New Haven gets a lot of the cruise ships so they have the higher end shops.”
Valerie smiled. “Sounds like you guys had quite the night. You must be starving.”
“They had some meat. But I did talk to Alessandro about donated blood—“ Gabriella started.
“Yes, we’ve talked. Donated blood is fine.”
“What if I have a symbiotic relationship with a human?” Harry asked.
“We’ll talk about that when you’re older.”
“We picked some things up for John. He didn’t want to come,” Gabriella said.
“That was kind of you.”
“Can I play my new video games?” Harry asked.
“Let’s do dinner first.”
For the first time, Valerie was able to visualize a life here.
Chapter T
hirty-six
The Blood Connoisseur
Valerie dressed in a sun dress her daughter had chosen for her, a light white fabric with spaghetti straps and a low V-neck. Her hair had air dried into free flowing waves. Barefoot on the tiled kitchen floor, she prepared steak and donated blood for her family as Gabriella grilled salmon and boiled rice for her own dinner. Ethan had silently snuck out of the house and returned just as quietly after feeding. But he was out on the patio setting the table prepared to join them for dinner anyway. When Valerie had learned that he had already eaten, she didn’t know how to feel. That meant that he had killed someone tonight. True, it would have been a person already in the throws of death. He was the black angel of death. Except that he wasn’t an angel. He was a vampire. He wasn’t sent by God. He was sent by hunger. And even if the human had been dying, it had still been alive. But for tonight, she pushed those thoughts out of her head. She hadn’t lied to him when she told him that she no longer knew the difference between right or wrong, or what he was, what she was. For at least one night, she didn’t want any of that to matter.
Alessandro and Jonathan were joining them too. Alessandro had fed off a variety of young people at the club. Tomorrow they would notice a bruise on the side of their necks and not quite remember the man that they had made out with. Perhaps those bruises weren’t always on their necks. Somehow that seemed more wrong and invasive than what Ethan did.
Jonathan would feed after Gabriella herself had eaten, and they had found some privacy in their room. But both wanted to keep the family company as they dined. The mood was light, almost celebratory. Harry was rattling off every last thing he had read or seen or learned on the internet. He was full of stories about the sights of the island and their shopping excursion. She had never seen him so . . . alive. He never once mentioned human blood or complained about the cold, donated blood. She remembered the night he skipped school and how he told her that he had been bored. Watching how excited and engaged her youngest was, she was beginning to think that leaving Sangre Valley was best thing that ever could have happened to him.
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