by Minda Webber
Next to the Ripper exhibit, a goblin was propped up on a chair filled with spikes, eating donuts. He was real. Bea pointed to him. “He kind of ruins the atmosphere.”
I nodded. Goblins hated authority and generally didn’t do what they were told. These nasty, grumpy, evil little critters also loved donuts, go figure.
“I won’t get a better chance to interview one,” Bea said and went over to the goblin and started a conversation with him. Bea was just so curious, although I could have told her the goblin wouldn’t tell her anything useful, since they were known for lying and also stealing kids. Although, that was like centuries ago when the Pied Piper stole the kids back and forced the King of Goblins to sign a No-Steal-Kids peace treaty. Dagan raised a questioning brow.
“Bea is doing a research paper in English on the roots of myths such as goblins and ghosts. I know I’ve told her that the little buggers never tell the truth, but nothing I can say will stop her from asking him questions, even though she’ll just get a pack of dribble for her answers.”
“Goblins lie at the drop of a hat, I thought everybody knew that,” Dagan added as he watched Bea question the goblin.
I shrugged my shoulders. Bea was Bea and it didn’t matter if you told her the sky was blue and not red, if she got her mind set on something she’d do a million experiments to try and prove to you that the sky was red as well.
Suddenly, someone screamed and a brown-haired girl ran into the room with a ghost chasing her. The girl was Rhonda and the scream was so fake. She either needed acting lessons or to watch a whole bunch more horror movies.
“That’s her,” I told Dagan. As the ghost chased Rhonda over by the wax wolf-man, I stepped in front of the exhibit and grabbed her arm when she tried to run by me. “You’re going nowhere.”
“Stop it!” She said as she tried to shake off my arm.
“I don’t think so, Rhonda, you’ve got some explaining to do,” I said as I tightened the hold on her arm while the ghost hovered in the background. “You need to go haunt somebody else for a bit,” I advised.
The ghost floated close to me. It was an elderly gentleman with spectacles. I smiled at him and he winked at me, then disappeared in the blink of an eye. Most ghosts are fairly reasonable unless they died violent deaths. Dying by murder and mayhem tended to make a ghost testy, I guess.
Rhonda noticed who I was the moment I grabbed her. Her eyes reflected her anger at being stopped by me, but now I noted that fear invaded their brown depths. “Look, I could lose my job. I don’t have a break for another hour.”
“Better to lose a job than your life,” I replied coldly. “You set me up. Why?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, as she jerked hard on her arm, hoping to dislodge me.
“You’re lying and I don’t have time for this!” I was getting madder by the minute. She knew something and she was going to tell me the information I needed. “You almost got me and my friends killed last night!”
She kicked me in the knee, which I wasn’t expecting, but looking back on it later, I would wonder why I didn’t expect a move similar from someone desperate to escape their reckoning. No one liked to face the truth when they had betrayed another person.
The kick caught me square in the knee and pain shot up my leg. I gasped and dropped her arm and she started around me only to run into my own version of the Prince of Darkness, who had been watching our conversation a few feet away. So great was her terror over me accosting her that she never noted Dagan was with me. My hero.
“Not so fast,” Dagan said, as he grabbed her left arm and swung her back to face me. His grip was like steel. I happily noticed, and while I was rubbing my sore knee, I watched her face turn pale, the color of spilt milk. Good, she deserved to be uncomfortable for the havoc she had caused, not to mention the danger she had brought crashing down on our unsuspicious heads.
“Rhonda, this is my friend Dagan. He’s a vampire, and if you won’t talk to me, then I’ll let you talk to him after he’s had his dinner.” I wanted to call him my boyfriend, but I was afraid that might be too much too fast and I didn’t want anything to queer the deal with Dagan.
I took great pleasure in watching her face paling even more until she looked like brand new copy paper. Two points for our side. “You had better tell me why you decided to sell me out. You’ve been working for my family for a long time. It doesn’t make sense. Why did you do it?”
She gulped. “Look, I don’t know much, okay.” She glanced over at the skeleton-masked vampire, who was pretending to bite the girl in chains on the back wall. Since we weren’t paying them any attention, he didn’t have to act his part, so he was oblivious to us, spending his time flirting with the chained girl. Bea was also oblivious as she argued with the goblin and hadn’t yet realized that I had found my quarry.
‘Nobody’s going to help you Rhonda, so spill it,” I snapped as I stared at her, a look of pure disgust on my face. “Betrayal is such an ugly word. It’s something I won’t forget! You are really stupid to have the Frankenstein’s enmity for as long as you live over this dirty deed of betrayal!” Talk about biting the hand that fed you, and she wasn’t even a vampire.
She gulped again, and her eyes shifted nervously from me to Dagan to me again. “I needed the money.”
“So you betrayed me for money. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. She betrayed her bosses every time she gave me a name to rob a grave. So her betraying me shouldn’t have come as a big shock. But it did because I was gullible, I guess.
I have to admit it never once entered my mind that Rhonda would turn against me. I had known her since I was in eighth grade. We both went to the same gymnastics class until last year when she quit. I guess it was one of those life lessons my dad was always talking about. Don’t judge a book by its cover and don’t judge a Judas by his lie. “Who was it that paid you? Who wanted to know where we would be?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She glanced from me to Dagan and back to me again and then her eyes flicked to Dagan. Her eyes seemed to stick there for a moment. I could tell she was afraid, but she also thought Dagan was hot. That bugged me. “V.J. really, I don’t know who it was. I just got a phone call,” Rhonda finally said and smiled at Dagan.
“You’re lying,” Bea pronounced definitively as she walked up in time to hear Rhonda’s confession.
Dagan shook his head. “Sorry Bea, but she’s not lying. I can tell.”
“Really, that’s way sweet,” Bea said as she stared at him, studying him like a bug under glass. Did I mention that Bea studied bugs sometimes for science and sometimes just for fun? “So can all vampires tell when people lie?”
“No,” he replied, as he lessened his grip on Rhonda and turned her face up to his with his free hand. I knew that usually only the really old vampires could tell who lied and who didn’t. Evidently, vampire royalty could tell liars as well. I’d add that to my basic knowledge of vampire powers. I wondered if Debbs was aware of the royal powers of royal vampires?
“Tell me what you can remember about the call.” His voice was almost silky as he caught her eyes. His blue ones seemed to almost glow as Rhonda stared back at him, hypnotized.
Rhonda fell into his vampire gaze, which was kind of creepy and kind of fine, since I’d never seen an up-close vampire gaze and participant before. It reminded me of the snake charmers charming their cobras in movies I had seen.
“It was a girl that called. She was young-kind of. At least sixteen and not old, at least not over twenty-three or twenty-four. She had a Texas accent. She said she’d pay me five hundred dollars if I’d tell her what grave you were robbing.”
“You sold me that cheap?” Man, five hundred dollars wasn’t squat compared to a lifetime of me paying her for information. But then, Rhonda hadn’t been known for her brain or her math abilities.
Dagan shook his head at me. His eyes held a trace of confusion as he turned back to Rhonda. �
��You mean that the girl who called you didn’t have you send V.J. to my grave?”
“No, she didn’t.”
Bea, Dagan and I looked at each other. We all thought whoever had hired the ghouls was the same one that had us opening up his grave. He turned back to question her since she was standing there like a mannequin waiting for further instructions. Maybe, it was a good thing that very few vampires could do this vampire gaze thing, I decided as I watched Rhonda standing as still as a statue, her eyes unfocused.
“Who told you to tell V.J. to rob my grave? Who paid you for that?”
“Nobody. I mean, I got the paperwork in late and when V.J. called, I thought that this would be a good corpse for the school mascot. I knew the body was young and not messed up since the person had died from a wasp sting.”
Dagan winced at the wasp sting thing.
“Well, geez, that doesn’t help much and it doesn’t make sense. It’s just too big a coincidence I would rob your grave. I mean why yours and not some other grave?” I asked as I looked to him for an answer, my brain racing trying to come up with an explanation.
I turned back to Rhonda. “Nobody told you to choose Dagan’s grave?” I tried one more time to get Rhonda to budge from her story, but she stuck like glue, although she did fidget when he dropped his gaze from her to look at me. Something was bothering her. “What Rhonda, what is causing you to squirm? You just didn’t pick Dagan out of thin air, something must have happened. What was it? Think!”
“Nothing. I mean, I got the paperwork and then I got a headache, a really bad headache and I was cold, so I put on my jacket and lay down for a while.”
Dagan nodded and picked up her hand, rubbing it to encourage her to speak. “Then what happened after you woke up?”
She seemed to be about to answer when she hesitated and got this odd, blank look on her face. “Come on Rhonda, what happened? Look at me! That’s it. You woke up and then what happened?”
She struggled for a few more seconds, then her face cleared and she smiled. “I got up and I called you and told you about his grave. I had to tell you about this grave because for some reason, it was special. You had to pick his grave to rob, no other grave would do.”
“You’ve got more enemies than you know,” Bea said, her voice filled with concern as she looked at me and then back at Rhonda. “This is so not good. She’s been brainwashed to tell V.J. to chose your grave. Someone had a lot of power to do that. It’s hard to believe that person would be after V.J. and the gang. Still, Robbie and Carol are getting vicious. But do they have the money to hire something this powerful to be able to hypnotize a person. I don’t know.”
“I don’t think it’s Robbie and Carol on this one,” I said, thinking hard. Somehow it didn’t seem right. Carol and Robbie were a lot of things, but this plot seemed too smart for them to come up with it.
Dagan seemed to sense what I was thinking. “It all has to do with me. For some reason you were to rob my grave. The black magic with the ghouls attacking you and your friends is one situation. You picking my grave is another separate event. These events are by two different groups,” Dagan remarked thoughtfully. “Any more questions for her? Do you want to let her go now?”
Bea and I both shook our heads, so he released Rhonda who slunk away into the shadows.
“It still could be Carol and Robbie behind the ghouls attacking,” Bea said thoughtfully. “But how you ended up at Dagan’s grave is strange. Something strange is at work here. I do believe that something wicked this way comes.”
“You can say that.” I frowned. “We know it wasn’t Robbie who called to find out what grave we would be robbing, because Rhonda said the girl had a Texas accent. But it could be Carol. Did you find out if Julie Nault saw anyone the other day in the library?”
“She wasn’t in my seventh period today. Home sick. I’ll ask tomorrow,” Bea replied as we walked down the long corridor of the hallway. “We better find Hart and Debbs and let them know.”
We found them on the landing of the second floor. Quickly Bea filled them in as we walked down the stairs. We had just reached the end of the staircase when suddenly the lights went out and I heard the sound of footsteps, not human, pounding down the stairs. I didn’t like it one bit. Then I heard the growl. Now, I absolutely hated it. The growl wasn’t a dog. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I knew we were in some serious trouble, the kind with teeth and claws!
“Werewolves!” Dagan shouted. “Beware!”
Great, just great. I was about to get eaten again! Didn’t I tell you I had bad luck riding on my shoulder lately?
CHAPTER TEN
Now it was pitch black, with blood-curdling screams and deep-throated growls encompassing the night. It was chaos in the black and gray of shadows,. To me it was downright scary not knowing exactly where the big bad wolf was and whom he was stalking! I know, I’m a big, bad Frankenstein and should be prepared for all this cloak and dagger-sharp-werewolf-teeth stuff. But come on, I didn’t want to get chewed up on my first date with Dagan.
Not to mention that I didn’t have any real weapons with me tonight. Hey, I was with my boyfriend and you didn’t dress yourself out for monster-war on date night. Still, I put on my brave face and turned towards the howling. Yep, we had werewolves after us now. Am I surprised?
No. We were everything a big, bad wolf could want. Weren’t we lucky? I shuddered as I heard another howl..
Luckily, before I could figure out what to do, Dagan grabbed me and held me close to his side. At almost the same time, I felt him grab someone else and heard Bea gasp. Then he began to move very fast and I felt as if I was flying into the face of darkness and death.
I caught my breath when I felt something breathing down my neck as Dagan turned a corner. With lightning-fast reflexes he shoved Bea and I behind a laughing diabolical plastic clown that was in the corner of the old library in the house.
I just hated that. Not being shoved, but being shoved by a clown. I’ve never been fond of clowns and I hated this clown with his red nose glowing in the dark beside me in the haunted house. As Bea clutched my hand, I heard the sounds of a fight and Dagan’s cursing as growls filled the air.
“V.J,” Debbs shouted and I saw a flashlight in the doorway. Cleverly, we hadn’t brought our usual monster fighting equipment tonight, I was thankful that at least Debbs had a flashlight.
“Over here,” I yelled, as I searched for something to use as a weapon in the dark. I found a heavy vase, which I raised above my head waiting. I didn’t have long to wait when a half-man and half-wolf stuck his head around the clown. I brought down the vase. The sound in the dark was loud as it cracked over the wolf-man’s head.
Lights popped on and I saw Dagan knock another wolf-man to his knees. Blood was spurting in a steady jet stream from the throat, which was ripped open. Fortunately, Dagan just had bloody scratches on his chest. Although his shirt was ripped across the front, his head was still attached to his neck. I thought this a pretty good deal.
The wolf-man, or rather upon closer look, wolf-woman, I had struck was clutching her head as she turned and snarled at me. Behind her, Debbs shoved a short Da Vinci stake into her neck which caused the wolf-woman to howl and start trying to grab the stake out of the back of her neck. We didn’t wait to see if she managed to yank the stake out.
The five of us took off running out the back door of the house, unfortunately away from Bea’s SUV which was parked out front of the haunted house. Howls followed us.
One wolf-man came over a car and landed on Debbs, who rolled over with him, catching him in the stomach and sending him flying a few feet in the air. Perfect. A top cheerleader in action. The werewolf landed on his back and Dagan quickly stomped on his throat, causing the wolf-man to start gagging. He would have to change into either form to heal, so he was out of the count for the time being and one more down for our side.
“Hurry,” Hart yelled, his eyes wide with panic as we started running hard. About ten feet lat
er we hit stairs that led down to the River Walk. We ran down the stairs and hurried along past a section of the River Walk under construction. Scaffolding and tarps covered a thirty foot section of stone wall. Above this, on top of the stone wall, a wolf jumped down and missed Hart by inches. Debbs did a flying judo move that had her kicking the werewolf in the chest. The momentum sent him tumbling into the dark waters of the San Antonio River. The splash was loud and we pounded the pavement, running faster and faster. I felt like the gingerbread man in a horrid fairy tale. Which by the way, I’m never reading to my children. Fairy tales are just plain sadistic with hints of cannibalism and not from the wereanimals. The Grim Brothers must have been severely disturbed, maybe even sociopaths. Their poor parents and…..pets.
As we passed a section covered by tarps, I felt the brush of wind as a furred clawed hand reached out and tried to grab me. Dagan jerked me away as Hart slammed the wolf-man into the tarp with a large stone near the head area. We heard him grunt and then fall on all fours. Down the other side of the River Walk I saw huge shadows of wolves moving, their big heads grotesque on the human form. We ran faster around a corner and came upon some more stairs going down.
“How many?” I asked Dagan. If anyone could have gotten a good wolf count, it would be a vampire since their night vision was really good.
“Maybe a dozen, at least ten. I took care of two that won’t trouble us again,” he replied as we dodged a car and ran to the other side of the River Walk. Without discussion we all ran down more steps to a lower level of the section.
I was hoping we could lose ourselves in the crowds that were always along the River Walk. Debbs and I had both gotten one and there was a wolf in the river, as well. We had reduced their numbers by a little but in a supernatural fight with predators, any lessening of the ranks was appreciated.