“I gotta go.”
"And Jess?"
"What?"
"Happy birthday."
"Bye, Mindy." I hung up the receiver, tore out the door before my parents could stop me, and ran for our barn to saddle up Belle.
Chapter 56
DEAR VASILE,
Pardon the Mount Gretna Police Station letterhead on the admittedly cheap stationery. I am fortunate to have even this with which to write you.
It appears that I am accused of "attacking" a local girl here, Faith Crosse, and biting her in the neck. They will finish "processing" me soon (like the region's famous bologna!), so I shall try to keep this "short and sweet," as the Americans say. Most importantly, I did NOT sink my fangs into that insufferable girl. She completely fabricated the injury. The police officers slid a series of "shocking" photographs under my nose, watching my face. I could but laugh. Bite marks, yes. But from a vampire? No. A clever fakery, though. Faith is nothing if not clever. And apparently admirably inured to pain. The marks appeared rather deep. She had a few good bruises, too. Bravo. Excellent work.
During a particularly dark time, I rather enjoyed Faith's devious nature. Now my dalliance comes back to bite me. Almost deliciously ironic, isn't it?
Regardless, I sense that the mood in this little village is rather unforgiving at present. Although I am to be released "upon my own recognizance" until formally charged, I have a strong suspicion—vampire's intuition—that "the jig is up." (You must sample some of the old American crime dramas available on DVD. They have a certain grimly humorous sensibility that connects with a vampire.)
Or, to put it in terms you are more likely to understand, the mob is gathering, as I have anticipated for some time now.
I write because I know that you had longed for the pleasure of destroying me yourself for defying you. For breaking the pact and ruining your plan. Oh, how you no doubt thirsted to thrust the stake deep. But now the much-yeamed-for task will fall to a gang of ridiculous American teenagers. In a sense, they have bested you, Vasile. Is it cruel of me to feel so happy to deprive you of that which you so desired? And yet I do feel a certain joy to know that you will always wish it had been you. . . .
Thus, I go willingly to my fate in humble Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. Thus, history repeats itself. Yet another Vladescu destroyed. I shall strive to go as bravely and stoically as my parents. To uphold the honor of the ckm—which is more than you have done, Vasile, in my view.
I also write on behalf of Jessica. I never bit her, Vasile. She remains an American teenager. Leave her be. The dream of a Dragomir princess is over.
Is there more to say? It seems odd, given my penchant for rambling missives, that my final letter is so brief. But, in truth, I am done—in more ways than one. (Who can resist gallows humor? Is it not a mark of courage to laugh at one's own demise?)
I entrust this now to the United States Postal Service. Very reliable organization. It is the rare bureaucracy that one would trust to deliver one's last words. And yet I feel confident this will reach you expeditiously.
Your nephew in blood and memory,
Lucius
Chapter 57
BELLES HOOVES THUNDERED in the rainy night. I was freezing on her back. It was late winter, and the night was still icy cold, the sleet pelting against my face, melting through my thin shirt. There had been no time to grab a coat.
"Come on, Belle," I urged, slamming my heels into her flanks, willing my mare to go faster. It seemed like she understood my urgency, for she flew across the frozen field. I prayed she wouldn't hit a groundhog hole and snap a leg, the night was so dark and we tore so recklessly across the uneven terrain.
Save Lucius . . . Save Lucius. . . That's what I heard pounding in my ears with every hoofbeat.
Ahead of me, finally, the Zinns' barn loomed, pale gray and arched like a tombstone against the sky. A little cry escaped my lips. There were cars there. Already. But I can't be too late. I just can't. As I leapt from Belle's back before she even reined to a stop, I heard raised voices from inside the barn. Angry, male voices, and the sound of a scuffle. Running to the barn, I tore open the heavy door, hauling it back on its rusty track.
Inside: pandemonium. The struggle was already underway. The mob was loosed.
"Jake, no," I cried, seeing my ex-boyfriend there in the middle of the melee. But he didn't pay any attention. No one did. No one even noticed me running into the fight, trying to drag the boys off of Lucius. The crowd was in a lather. There was blood everywhere, fists flying, and Lucius struggling alone against them. He was so strong, but not strong enough for this. . . .
"I'll kill you for what you did to her," Ethan Strausser was screaming, pounding on Lucius. I tried to grasp Ethan's fists, but someone pushed me away, flinging me against a wall. I came back, yelling at them to stop, but no one paid attention. They were drunk on revenge and fear and hatred, hatred of someone different than themselves.
"Stop it," I begged. "Leave him alone!"
Lucius must have heard my voice, because he turned toward me, just for a second, and I saw surprise in his eyes. Surprise and resignation.
"Lucius, no," I begged, knowing what he was about to do.
Get himself destroyed.
But he made the fatal move, anyway. He turned back to the already furious boys and bared his fangs.
Macho bravado was abandoned among the attackers.
"Vampire!" Ethan cried, terror and shock mingling in his voice.
"Son of a bitch . . ." Frank Dormand backed away, looking petrified, as if he'd suddenly realized that it wasn't just a terrible game anymore. He'd unleashed a power he had never really expected to loose, for all his talk of vampires and websites and stakes.
Ethan scrambled backward on the hay-covered floor, too, but he was reaching blindly behind him for something.
I saw it before he located it. The stake. Homemade. Crude. But lethal. Half buried in the hay. I dove for it—but Jake saw it, too, and he was faster. He snatched it up and stalked toward Lucius, who was fighting his way to his feet, squaring off against the shorter but still powerful wrestler.
"No, Jake!" I wailed, scrambling to my knees, scrambling to grab Jake's legs, missing them as Jake gained speed. Lucius growled, advanced, too.
And then, as if in slow motion, I saw my ex-boyfriend raise his arm, lunge forward, and plunge the stake into Lucius's chest.
"Jake—no!" I screamed the words. Or I thought I screamed the words. I don't remember actually hearing them come out of my mouth.
And in a split second, it was over.
Jake—the nice boy—was standing over Lucius's body. Lucius's too-still body.
"What have you done?" I cried into the sudden silence.
Jake stepped back, the heavy, sharp, and bloody chunk of wood in his hand. "It had to be me," he said, looking at me with miserable eyes. "I'm sorry."
I didn't know what he meant. I didn't care.
"Lucius," I moaned, stumbling through the hay. I collapsed at his side, feeling for his pulse. It was there, but fainter than usual. Blood seeped from a hole in his shirt. A gaping hole. I glanced up at the circle of faces. Familiar faces. Guys I knew from school. The anger was gone now, and the realization of what they'd actually done seemed to be settling in. How could they have done this? "Get help," I begged them.
"No, Antanasia," Lucius said softly.
I bent over him, gently pressing my hands over the hole in his chest, as if I could stop the blood. "Lucius . . ."
"It is over, Jessica," he managed to say, voice soft. "Just leave it be.
A commanding voice came from the darkest corner of the barn. "Get out. All of you. And never speak of this. Never. Nothing ever happened here."
Dorin. My uncle had shed his usual merry demeanor, and he spoke with an unfamiliar authority as he emerged from the shadows, striding in, taking control.
Feet shuffled quickly in hay as the cluster of teenagers obeyed and dispersed, running as t
hough the vampire's words had been a slingshot releasing them into the night.
Where had Dorin come from? Why hadn't he been here in time? I rose and ran at him, pounding my stained fists against his chest. "You let this happen. You should have protected him!"
"Leave, Jessica," Dorin insisted, grabbing my fists. He was surprisingly strong. Sadness suffused his eyes. "This is Lucius's destiny. It's what he wishes."
No. That can't be. We just kissed. . . . "What do you mean, what he wishes'?" I wailed, running back to Lucius, falling to my knees. "Our destiny is together, right? Say it, Lucius."
"No, Antanasia," he said, voice weak and fading. "You belong here. Live a happy life. A long life. A human life."
"No, Lucius." I sobbed, begging him to live. He couldn't just give up. "I want to live with you."
"It is not to be, Antanasia."
I swore I saw tears in his black eyes, just before he closed them, and I started screaming, and the next thing I remembered was my dad's hands lifting me, pulling me away, carrying me, fighting against nothing and everything, to the van. I didn't know when they had arrived or how they had found me.
It didn't matter.
Lucius was gone.
Destroyed.
The body disappeared, and Dorin disappeared, and, as per Dorin's instruction, nobody ever spoke of it again. It was like the whole thing had been a dream. If not for the necklace around my throat, the way the clasp kind of burned where his fingers had sealed it, maybe I wouldn't have believed it myself.
Chapter 58
"AND THE WOODROW WILSON School Spirit Award goes to . . . Faith Crosse."
My fingers clutched the chain-link fence as the girl responsible, in large part, for Lucius's destruction strode to the temporary riser like some sort of hero, mounting the steps to a chorus of whistles and cheers from a sea of graduates in navy blue caps and gowns. Beneath her cap, Faith's blond hair flapped like a flag in the brisk wind as she accepted her award and waved to the crowd.
The numbness I'd carefully nurtured as a way of dealing with my pain and rage and loss nearly shattered to see Faith applauded, and I'm not sure how I kept from shrieking out loud.
Why did I come to watch graduation? I had refused to participate in the ceremony, but something perverse in me had drawn me to the football field to witness my classmates, many of whom I'd known since kindergarten—and a few of whom had participated in the slaughter of the one person I'd loved most in this world—receive their diplomas. I suppose I wanted to see their faces. Was there any hint of the evil deed they'd committed in that barn? Or had they convinced themselves that nothing had ever happened, as Dorin had advised? Or— and this was the possibility that made me sickest—did one or two of them believe they had done something good? Did Jake feel that way? He'd said to me that night, "It had to be me." What did that even mean?
"Antanasia." The voice was soft but clear. "It does no good to torture yourself. Although dreaming of revenge is a very typical vampire behavior."
Turning, I saw him.
A slightly pudgy, balding vampire, just a few feet from me, leaning against the wall of the field's concession stand under a sign urging us to contribute to the Woodrow Wilson Band Boosters. He wore a navy T-shirt with the Wilson mascot—a tough-looking, jowly dog dubbed "Woody"—embroidered on the chest.
Catching my eye, Dorin waved.
Just seeing him—someone connected to Lucius and that night—made me want to vomit, for just a second. When my stomach stopped lurching, I started walking like some sort of zombie.
Behind me, I heard more cheers as Ethan Strausser won an award for outstanding achievement in athletics.
The applause seemed to come from a million miles away as I made my way across the grass toward Dorin. Toward a brief but intense past that still consumed me.
"Well, well, well. Don't you look pale and serious." Dorin clucked as I approached him. "Almost like a proper vampire." He hugged me, but I stiffened in his embrace, still believing he'd failed to protect Lucius. "Why aren't you graduating today with the rest of them?" he asked.
"They don't mean anything to me," I said, stepping back from him.
"And yet you're here!"
"Dorin—forget about me. What are you doing here?"
"Hmm." Dorin frowned. "It's very complicated stuff. Very difficult to explain."
I really wasn't up for anything challenging, but I asked anyway. "What kind of complicated stuff?"
"It seems that there's a bit of a dustup in Romania." Dorin sighed, avoiding my eyes. "Something of a mess, really. You're not supposed to know about it, of course. But I got to thinking . . . it's not really fair to keep you in the dark. We've probably done so for too long. That was Lucius's idea, of course. Don't blame me. If he knew I was here . . ."
My knees nearly buckled, and Dorin lunged to catch my elbow. "Steady there!"
"Did you just say . . . Lucius?" I demanded. "If Lucius knew you were here?" But that's impossible. . . . Lucius had been destroyed. . . .
Dorin cleared his throat, looking guilty and nervous. "He thought it was best to do it his way. But he's just miserable, and things are falling apart back home."
I grabbed Dorin by the shoulders, shaking him harder than I'd ever shaken anything in my life. "IS. LUCIUS. ALIVE?"
"Oh, yes, quite," Dorin admitted, trying to wrench out of my grasp. "But at this rate ..."
It is weird how relief and joy—the most intense joy imaginable—and fury—the most intense fury imaginable—can get all mixed up, and the next thing you know, you are sobbing and laughing and pounding your fists against a vampire's chest, driving him backward against a high school concession stand.
When I regained the smallest measure of my composure, we went home to get my passport. I was going to Romania. I was going home to find Lucius.
Chapter 59
"SO JAKE ROSE to the occasion, so to speak. Agreed to be in on the whole stunt. Said he sort of admired Lucius, in spite of everything. Something about Lucius standing up for you against that bully Frank Dormand."
"And that was enough to convince him to thrust a stake into Lucius's chest?" I was skeptical.
"Well, I may have threatened him, too. Just a little," Dorin confirmed. "But he's a nice boy, that Jake. It's a good thing Lucius had mentioned him in letters home."
"Lucius had mentioned him?"
"Oh, of course," Dorin said. "He was always complaining about the 'squatty, nice' boy who was messing up the whole courtship."
Nice. There was that word again. This time, it made me smile. "Yes, Jake is a nice guy." If I ever made it back to Lebanon County, I would thank him.
"Pretzel?"
"No, thanks." We were flying at about 35,000 feet, zooming toward Romania, back to the land of my birth, and Dorin was filling me in on the whole story. How he'd enlisted Jake in a last-minute scheme to stab Lucius, making sure Ethan Strausser or some other zealot didn't get the chance to plunge the stake in too deeply.
As it was, Jake had nearly gone too far. "The boy doesn't know his own strength." Dorin sighed, shaking pretzels into his hand. Somehow he'd gotten about a dozen packs from the flight attendant. "Young Mr. Zinn was rather concerned about the whole thing for quite a while. But it had to be realistic. I told him not to worry, not to worry. Everything went just fine."
"Why didn't Lucius just run away?" As soon as I asked the question, I realized how absurd it was. A vampire prince turn tail? Not likely.
"Don't be ridiculous," Dorin said, echoing my thoughts. "Lucius wouldn't have even liked my enlisting Jacob. He really did want to be destroyed that night. He was quite surprised— and a little peeved—to wake up still alive. He got over it, though."
I stared out at the passing clouds. "But how could Lucius do that to me? Let me think he was gone? Why didn't he contact me?"
Dorin patted my arm. "He really thought it was best for you to believe he was gone. Lucius—he sees his dark side. Very clearly."
"Lucius
can control that side of himself. He just won't believe it.
"Yes," Dorin agreed. "You and I are certain that Lucius is honorable. Anyone who knows him can see that. Indeed, Lucius's endless struggle with his conscience is evidence of the strength of his good side. But Vasile tried to twist him, to make Lucius a pawn in his cruel schemes. And so Lucius never seems to know his true nature. Noble prince or vicious fiend? Both? He is a vampire at war with himself."
Dorin added, "Buying that horse, Hell's Belle, didn't help, either. Lucius got a bit obsessed with that animal. He felt a kinship with it, and started thinking maybe he was just too damaged to live, too. That eventually, he would harm . . ."
Beth_Fantaskey-Jessicas guide to dating the dark side. Page 27