Anika didn’t like the plan. “No, Jessie. You’re going to have to remain yourself and ride behind Eddy in case we need you on the way. Eddy will have control of Gus and Moondance and me, and he doesn’t have my witchy abilities.”
She walked behind a tree, and Eddy drove out the other side, engine roaring.
“Never mind about the magical stuff.” He rolled out, giving the engine a couple of revs, with his bald head, bare round belly under an open leather vest, and tattoos all up and down both arms. “I brought my sidecar. You two ladies sit behind me,” he said pointing to me and Ginny, “and you three get in the sidecar. You two little ladies will fit on the wide main seat, and the fella here can sit facing you on the ledge in front. Sorry, pal, no cushion for you. Hop to it now!”
We all loaded into the big bike, and Eddy took off immediately. He buzzed past the gawking crowd and down the dusty road. I looked over my shoulder, and even the executioner had stopped what he was doing to watch as the amazing motorized vehicle disappeared into the distance.
“Hang on,” Eddy ordered, once we got past the populated areas and into the countryside.
We did hang on – tightly. He lifted the front wheel of the motorcycle off the road, and then the whole thing started rising gradually into the air.
“Woo hoo!” Ginny hollered behind me. “ET phone home!”
“It’s time for you to do your thing there, Miss Delacroix. I’ll get us to Munich, but you need to get us to 1833. It’s a seven or eight hour drive, but using this route, I’ll have us there in 20 minutes.”
“October 1833,” I said and tapped my cheek twice.
Eddy waited a moment and then shook his head. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Miss. We’re still in 1793.”
I got very nervous, and my heart started pounding. Maybe I couldn’t do this. Maybe we would be lost in 1793 forever.
“Make it happen, ma’am.”
I felt the vibrating hum of the bloodstone arrowhead on my chest, and I saw it glow when I tilted my head downward. I took it between my forefinger and thumb. “Oktoberfest 1833!” I said very loudly. Kaya and the others looked at me with hopeful eyes, but nothing was happening.
“Get ready for it!” Ginny hollered.
Suddenly a bright light began emanating from the bloodstone amulet. I felt the presence of my father and aunt around me, and then…it was like a powerful force just shot out from the stone. A radiant glimmering circle opened up in front of us, and there was a great rush of air and warmth that seem to pull us through the shimmering loop.
In just a moment the transport was complete, and the rushing air and cloudy darkening sky turned to a peaceful and slightly more sunny perch high above a forest, with a big city and huge festival looming not far in front of us. We could hear the cheerful music and the roar of the crowd.
It was almost sundown now, but the moon had not yet begun to rise in the twilight sky. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a full one.
“Looks like you helped out with the transportation too, Miss Delacroix. We’re already here. I better land this thing somewhere where it won’t get a lot of attention or cause any commotion.”
Leo seemed to be particularly excited as we landed in an alley behind a nearby abandoned warehouse. The sisters had been in a deep conversation during the entirety of our brief journey, and Lilianna seemed to be crying again.
“You should have told me,” I heard her say to Kaya, tearfully. “If I had only known!”
“It was a long time ago, now, Lily. Don’t worry about it.” Kaya comforted her younger sister, and they both put on their most sociable faces and disembarked the sidecar.
“First order of business,” I announced, “we have to get Lilianna out of that T-shirt and into some real clothes, and Kaya needs something more appropriate for the times than those 21st Century denim shorts and that tiger paw T-shirt too.”
There was a large bazaar and flea market near the entry to the main festival, where we found everything we needed – including an amazing bratwurst on a hard roll with the most authentic sauerkraut I’ve ever tasted. Fortunately, every time I reached into my pocket, I came out with just the right coins to pay for our food and some handmade clothing.
We had fun shopping for an hour or more, trying on all types of clothing from 19th Century Germany. Anika was with us now too, as she is the only one Eddy can morph into and must have felt like stretching her legs and enjoying the festival.
I held up a brightly colored summer dress with diagonal red stripes and looked at her. “Anika, I could swear I’ve seen you wearing this exact same dress around the Inn!” I laughed, thinking it was just my imagination.
“You have, Jessie, except it’s a shirt now…I’ve gained. In fact I bought it right here – the last thing I ever bought before I got joined up with Gus and Moondance – except for my leather slippers.”
“You’re kidding. You’ve really got to tell me how that happened. I’ve been dying to know.”
“Actually, Jess, that’s why I was excited when you all decided to come here! I’d kind of like to see how it happened myself. When it gets a little darker we need to go inside the gate and look for me around the pond.”
Wow. So she didn’t even know how they got to share one shape-shifting entity. I was going to ask her more questions, but Ginny let out a hoot. She was helping the girls find some clothing, and suddenly I heard the sound of firearms being locked and loaded. The rifles and handguns that the shopkeepers pulled out looked a lot more modern than the muskets we had just seen in France only 40 years earlier.
“Hey, Jessie, how’s your German?” Ginny was waving me over to a booth full of clothing with several armed men now gathered around it. “Git on over here before these guys send a posse out after a mascot. They think that Kaya was attacked by a monster cat because of that Clemson T-shirt you gave her. It’s got that big orange tiger paw on the front.”
I didn’t really know any German, but I tried to convey to them that the paw print was just painted onto the shirt. I had Kaya put a large dress over her head, without putting her arms through the sleeves. She pulled the shirt off over her head, and I gave it to one of the men to keep. He felt the silk-screened image and laughed, and that was the end of the situation. The men went back to their shops, and Kaya and Lily tried on more outfits.
Then I turned to speak to Leo, but he wasn’t there. A moment later I heard a thump several feet behind me. Leo had just jumped down from the large branch of a tree at least ten feet above us.
Leo smiled, and his fang caught a glint from the light of the setting sun.
“I had to get away from the direct rays of the sun,” he said with a grin “—and get a little snack.”
I wiped a spot of blood from the corner of his mouth, and he grabbed my wrist and cleaned my thumb with his lips.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I got it all.”
Behind him were two squirrel carcasses that he had sucked dry. Well…animals die so I can eat them too, I guess, I thought to myself.
“Don’t worry.” He looked at me solemnly. “The young ones are fine, and they’re old enough to be on their own now. I just had to…”
“It’s okay, Leo. I understand perfectly.” He looked so much better now, with a tinge of color in his pale cheeks.
“Hey, Jess! You’ve gotta take a look at these fine ladies in their fancy dresses! I think our girls found the right clothes.”
“How’s this?” Lilianna asked, twirling and dancing a merry jig to the music in the distance.
She was wearing a colorful green patterned sack dress with white hose and kerchief, and she looked wonderful…and wonderfully happy for the first time since I’d met her.
“You look perfect!” Kaya told her sister, although she had chosen something a bit more mature and flashy for herself. It was a sexy low cut red dress, long with a satiny finish. The poufy short sleeves ended well below her bare shoulders in a line that went straight across her enviable cleavage.
It really lifted my heart to see the two sisters enjoying each other’s company so much and feeling so carefree, no doubt for the first time in a long while. In the waning light their smiles looked identical. It was quite obvious that they were very close, and they had an unmistakable family resemblance.
The girls each twirled pompously and then began to laugh. But Lilianna seemed to lose her balance and fell to the grassy ground. Kaya knelt down immediately to attend to her.
“Is she all right, Kaya?” I knelt next to her too. “She’s probably just dizzy from spinning.”
“No.” Kaya looked up at me with wide fearful eyes, and then her whole body began to tremble. “A full moon is rising. I can feel it too. We’re going to change…both of us.”
Chapter Fourteen
Boy, did we pick the wrong night to visit Oktoberfest. The moonlight had barely started to glimmer on the horizon to the East, just as the sun was flickering its final rays in the West.
“Take Lily’s hand and run!” Leo commanded urgently, as he took Kaya’s hand and headed quickly to the outskirts of the shops. He ran perhaps 50 yards and stopped behind a large oak tree that had grown very wide. Several trunks had merged together, giving us a bit of privacy from the crowd.
“Now get away!”
The two women were convulsing as the change started taking place very quickly.
“They will be dangerous and ferociously mindless until the change is complete in a few minutes.” Leo ran with us to an area not far away where there were narrower trees we could use for protection as we watched our friends writhing on the ground not far away.
Their new clothing tore away as they growled while roughly grinding their bellies into the earth, banging the ground with their fists – or paws. They rose up on their arms and arched their necks back to howl loudly at the rising moon.
“They have been at this for many years,” Leo told us with a reassuring tone, “so they will regain their senses and be able to control themselves very soon, as long as nothing gets them riled – at least I know that Kaya will. But for now, their blood is roiling, and their wolf nature rules.”
The noise had gotten the attention of some of the locals, including a young boy from a nearby woodworking shop.
“Father!” I heard him say in old German, “It’s one of those beasts from the storybooks!” He grabbed a small hand-carved crossbow and a single arrow as he ran toward the girls. “I’ll get them, Father!”
I’m not sure why I could understand the language he spoke, as I had not understood the shopkeepers speaking the same language moments before. Perhaps it was dire necessity that caused my powers to help me out.
Kaya was still on the ground on her hands and knees, but Lilianna stood and roared fiercely at the boy. Still wild-eyed, she stood and looked as though she were going to rampage toward the young lad. He stood his ground and loaded the arrow into the crossbow.
“You’re mine now, big bad wolf,” he said as he drew back the arrow and took aim.
Kaya let out a wail and a whimper as she saw what was about to happen, and Leo and I were hollering at the boy not to shoot. But it was too late. Our words went unheeded.
Just as he released the arrow towards Lilianna, Kaya leapt from her crouched position and launched herself into the air between the flying arrow and her sister. The arrow struck Kaya in the chest in midair, and she fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. A mournful wail went up from Lilianna, and then she quickly disappeared into the vast wooded area.
“Got you, monster! Papa!” the boy cried out happily as Anika, Leo, and I rushed toward our friend. Ginny was already there.
“He got her good,” was all Ginny could say.
A vast pool of blood was around her quickly.
“Leo!” Anika shrieked, “You’ve got to change her! Make her immortal!”
Leo lifted her neck and back. “It’s too late.” He could barely get the words out through his grief. “She’s lost too much blood…she’s already gone. The arrow went right through her heart.” He pulled the arrow out of her chest, and its silver tip glinted slightly in the light of the moon’s first glimmer. He tossed it aside.
I was numb, and I hugged Ginny tightly. We both wept. Then we turned to see the werewolf gradually change back into our beautiful friend, Kaya. Ginny handed Leo a cotton dress she had just bought, and Leo covered her.
Ginny and I got on our knees on either side of Leo and did our best to comfort him, while Anika stood across from us with an expression that was hard to read.
If I had the power over life and death, I would have brought her back, but I knew it was not something I could do.
“Leo…”
All heads quickly turned towards the corpse. It was Kaya’s voice…but she did not move or open her eyes.
“Leo,” she said again, as a glowing translucent spirit began to sit up from within her, though her body was still lying dead before us.
People were gathering around, and the young boy was there with his father, crying now too. It seemed that they could all see Kaya’s living soul, with her same face and body sitting up in front of us.
Kaya’s spirit looked at Leo, and she put her ghostly hands on his face as she wiped a tear from his cheek. “Leo, you will take care of my sister.”
Leo said nothing, but he looked into her eyes, trying his best to think of anything besides his sorrow for his deceased true love. “You will take care of her forever…every day and every night. You will make her happy and teach her how to love and enjoy life, as you taught me. When she is 18, you will marry Lilianna and make her your wife. You will grow beyond middle age together, and before you grow old you will make her immortal.”
Then Kaya’s spirit turned and looked at me. “Jessie Delacroix, I can see from this dimension that you are a powerful wizard and goddess. I ask you to lift Leo’s curse – allow him to be human and mortal again.”
I looked at Anika. “Can I do that?” I asked her silently, and she just nodded and tapped the top of her chest.
I knew that meant that I would need the help of my arrowhead talisman. I put my left hand on the charm and my right on Leo’s head. Then I inhaled quickly and could feel it as I literally breathed the curse out of him. I felt the strange and powerful desires and cravings of the vampire rush through my veins and then out into the wind.
It was quite an upsetting and horrible sensation, but the reward to Leo was worth it. Color and life returned to his face, and a new joy seemed to replace his cold, sullen mood.
“But, Kaya…” I was curious. “…you told Leo to make Lilianna immortal before they grow old. How can he do that now?”
She just smiled. “That will take care of itself, my dear.” Then she smiled at Anika, who nodded her head. Kaya put both of her lithe hands on Leo’s face now. “I’ll be watching over you. Lilianna must remain a werewolf. It is a great gift and a power that will allow her to do many good and necessary things that would not be possible otherwise. You will know when it’s time to make her immortal – after she saves your life. Then you will retire to Whispering Pines. Do not let my sister take vengeance for what happened in my past.”
Then a warm feeling rushed through all of us as Kaya’s spirit rose up and out of her lifeless body. Her glowing essence floated gently skyward as far as the treetops until a circle of bright light appeared directly North of her. Like a flash of lightning, she bolted into the light, which flared as it consumed her, and then quickly vanished. When we looked down, the dead body was gone, along with every drop of blood. Leo gave the dress that covered her back to Ginny, and we just stood there looking at each other.
The crowd dispersed slowly, and their silence gradually turned to whispered chatters of disbelief. As they cleared out, I noticed a tall gaunt man perhaps 80 feet off to the East. He was translucent, backlit and silhouetted by the arc of the top half of the full moon on the horizon. I knew it was Gus, the silent old pawn broker and savant who ran the antique pawnshop back at the Inn in Whisper
ing Pines – Anika, Eddy, and Moondance’s alter ego. I turned my head to see if Anika might have morphed into him, but she was still standing there, talking to Ginny. She saw me looking at her and seemed to understand why I had turned to look at her. She quickly turned toward the moon. I looked too, but Gus was no longer there. He had probably just wandered off into the crowd.
“I know we’ve just been through a hard and harrowing tribulation,” Anika told us all with a serious tone, “but we need to go inside the festival gates and look for me now. I can’t let this opportunity go by. And don’t look for a fat chick – I was a lot thinner then.”
Chapter Fifteen
“We need a crowbar to get through this crowd!” Ginny snorted twice at her jest, but she was pretty accurate.
Inside the gate the crowd was packed together like sardines as we passed bier haus after bier haus. Everyone was carrying a pint of beer, and most of them were spilling it on me.
I sensed some powerful eyes on me, so I stood on my tiptoes and looked to my right to see Gus standing alone on a green hill with his hands crossed at his gaunt waist. He actually looked almost transparent, like a ghost. His golden eyes seemed to almost glow as they penetrated me. I blinked and he was gone. I seemed to sense that he needed me for some reason, though I had never known Gus to need anyone or anything. I saw him three more times – never moving, but always farther along on the hill, like a chain of lighthouses guiding me. I kept heading my group closer to the other side of the crowd where Gus was directing me.
“Follow that polka music,” Anika said, turning directly toward my last sighting of Gus. “There should be a small pond below that green hill over there.”
Leo was trailing a short distance behind us, still broken hearted over the loss of his true love. I took his hand so we could keep up with Anika, who was moving more quickly now, with Ginny leading the way.
As our hands locked, I could sense the grief and emptiness Leo was feeling…as well as the vestigial hunger for blood that was ebbing in his now-human veins, but still driving him crazy.
Jessie Delacroix_Fright Night at the Haunted Inn Page 8