“The same handwriting,“ she mutters, looking at the way he’d written her last name.
“He’s cruel, alright,“ she thinks about him nearly spoiling her goal not to mention he’d just left Domina there, as a tree, “surely something he could have done,“ she adds and decides, if she sees him, not to like him at all.
She thinks about an old vampire against vampire rivalry her Father went through once. Having outdone the cad was his was to solace - peace and quiet from his disturbance. Having something on such a vampire as Old Nostramadeus? Nearly impossible, but Jessica, she thinks, has done it.
“I’ve have it!” she cheers, “Domina threw his ring out the window. She would not marry him. Drew and I both said ‘yes’. He was turned down by his chosen bride. If I just had both rings, here, I know we could get out!” She hurries to the In Between and tells Domina her good news.
After all that running around - not to mention an entirely sleepless night before - Jessica grows very, very tired. She returns to the Castle and sneaks her way into the Old Vampire’s bedroom where she flops onto the enormous, red silk and velvet covered, lavishly curtained, four poster bed and falls asleep beneath the ancient painting of a woman in a white dress, holding a book, her brown hair tied up in a blue ribbon. Once in a deep sleep, Jessica dreams of her mother. She is discussing what it is like to be married - mortal to immortal - with a vampire. She can not see Jessica, at first, and when she does, she has a fright and runs away. Someone else appears to her, an older woman, sent to caution her: the rings’ v’s actually stand for: vendetta, victorious, vicious, and vampire.”
Jessica wakes thinking, “But the ring only has three v’s and Drew told me they mean virtue, vitality and valor.”
She rubs her eyes and tells herself, “It was only a dream.” She looks around taking in the ancient luxury and style of a by-gone (not to mention otherworldly) day. She thinks about Drew. At home, Drew is thinking about nothing other than Jessica. Fretting ended yesterday. This morning he has made a phone call he never imagined he would make without Jessica by his side. He has called the home of the Vampire DeAngeliuson to tell him he has asked Jessica’s hand in marriage, and that Jessica is missing!
“She did not return home last night. She has not called me this morning, and inspection of her room has proven she still has not returned,” he says his voice a bit shaken with nervousness and his hands clammy with sweat.
Then Drew thinks about Theopolis and says, “There is one more person I could ask.” He hangs up with a determined plan, instead of the all out worry he’d been experiencing, glad he’d called. He hurries off to question Theopolis while Jessica’s Father packs for a quick trip to Thaddeus Preference’s nonsensical (he thinks) school in Heavonshire.
“Say no more!” is all Theopolis has to say (especially to Drew).
“You know where she is?!!”
“Mm-hmm,” he says, “for a slight fee, have her back to you in no time.”
“Slight fee?” he asks.
“Your first born,” he says.
“Ha ha,” Drew says, “very funny. Fifty bucks?” Drew says looking inside his wallet.
“Take it!” Theopolis says slapping hands as he takes the money and smiling that he’d actually gotten something from him (something other than plasma and vital fluids, that is). Theopolis has become quite the true vampire, lately, a true (biting) vampire. I’m not sure, but I really think he meant ‘blood’, although he wouldn’t bite Drew, a true biting vampire always lets a mortal know he’s just a decision away, and sometimes a weak one. Tongue in cheek of course, but Theopolis doesn’t let the moment slide past.
“You’re sure about this?” Drew asks.
“She went to find your ring,” he says, “Sure you know what you’re getting into?” he asks. Drew laughs a sort of nervous laugh and then tells him to please hurry, confiding he’s been very worried about Jessica.
“You’re not,” Theopolis says.
“Not what?”
“Sure of what you’re getting into. Not in the slightest, but I’ll go. I’m going,” he goes to the door.
“Gone,” he says, and shuts it behind him.
Drew paces a few steps, then realizes he’s in Theopolis’ apartment, so he goes outside and shuts the door.
First two steps into the Underworld’s dusty gulch - not the privileged ‘ride’ of Jessica - Theopolis sees her ‘talking’ to a tree.
“What are you doing, Jessica?!” Theopolis says out loud, but Jessica is still too far away to hear him. He looks around him.
“Hmm. No trolls,” he says and runs quickly up to Jessica thinking about the intensely worried look upon the face of last seen Drew.
“Did you hear me?” he interrupts, “What are you doing here?”
Jessica nearly falls against Theopolis in some sort of ‘hug’ slash collapse.
“I’m stuck! O vengenance! Theopolis!! Now you’re stuck, too! We can’t- I mean, we weren’t supposed to jump a third time!!”
“Well, drain a televangelist! Jess-ica?!! You mean I can’t get OUT?!”
“That’s exactly what she said. Well almost,” the tree says.
“Jess, the tree’s talking to me,” he whines.
“I know. Calm down.”
“I can’t. I came to get you out of here, and now-”
“Does Drew know where I am?”
“He sent me. To get you out of here!”
“So he know we’re here, in the Underworld?”
“No!!!”
“What?!”
“I didn’t tell him where you were. I just told him I knew where you were. I promised to have you back by, like, right now,” he says looking at his wrist where there is no watch.
“O vile intentions! Horrendous host!”
“Are you just going to stand here and curse?”
“I’m thinking! We need my ring.” Theopolis looks at Jessica’s hand.
“You’re wearing it,” he says.
“This is the other one.”
“You found it?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Well at least one thing has been accomplished, but now, we’re stuck. Have you tried everything?”
“Everything I could think of,” she tells him.
“Why do you want the other ring?”
“This is the result of the vampire, Nostramadeus. This is,” she points to the tree.
“No!” Theopolis fakes a horrified response.
“Yes, but not his victim. He’d given her his ring. She threw it out the window.”
“So, you want both rings.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Why?”
“I just don’t think its going to work. I don’t think its enough. Besides, you don’t have both rings. And we can’t just go and get the other, now can we?” he asks and then he adds, “There’s got to be something else; some other angle we could work. Like, why is she a tree?”
“The Witch-” she starts to tell him but he interrupts.
“Well, there you go. The Witch. We’ll go and see this Witch and we’ll get out of here.”
“We can’t just leave her as a tree.”
“What about the Castle? Maybe there‘s a way, or something there” he says.
“It’s worth another look around,” Jessica says. She pulls a letter from her pocket.
“I found this in the Castle and I also had a strange dream. About this ring,” she looks at it, “the four v’s of the rubies were defined, but this ring only has three,” she says.
The tree - Domina - speaks, “Twist the top ruby to the right,” she says.
Jessica twists and its tiny encasing is actually a tiny box that lifts up to reveal a fourth, blood-red ruby. Jessica gasps in awe of its beauty, but quickly worries that the four v’s from the dream are right, not the three her finance so sweetly recited the night he asked her to marry him.
Thinking of Drew she insists to the others once more the same phrase, “
We’ve got to get out of here!” she says. Domina tells Jessica and Theopolis about the book of spells she’d once read from the Witch’s and back at the Castle. Jessica promises her they’ll find it if it’s still in there, and promises they will return.
Above, the confidence Drew has placed in Theopolis assured remarks is beginning to wear off.
“What is taking so long?” Drew repeats in his thoughts as he paces around, checking his watch for the third time since Theopolis had gone off to bring Jessica back - by now!
‘Worst comes to worse,” he thinks, “her Father is meeting me at home tonight.” After three hours of waiting, Drew reluctantly returns home - without Jessica - to greet her Father as soon as he arrives. He is tired from worry. His eyes have dark circles under them and the muscles between his eye brows are tense.
He pulls her ring from his pocket and looks at it, wondering what could be keeping Theopolis and remembers her words when she dropped it onto his open hand, “For safe-keeping.”
Underworld, in the library, Theopolis questions Jessica while she looks for the big book of spells Domina described.
“Why did you give your ring to Drew?”
“For safe-keeping,” she says (at almost the exact moment that Drew, in his thoughts, remembers hearing her say these very words).
“That’s odd, isn’t it?” he says, “Exactly the opposite. If we had the ring we’d be safe. He has it, we’re stuck. At risk of growing into a gulch tree or something.”
“You’re blaming me, again,” she says.
“If you’d just kept the ring on, Jessica, you’d have both and we’d be out.”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t be enough to have on the Old Vampire - both rings.”
“It’s the irony of the word safe-keeping I’m asking you to analyze, here. Don’t you think, if marrying Drew were the best choice you could make you wouldn’t have taken it off and said, for safe-keeping? And, if it were the best choice you could be making, do you think we’d be stuck here at the very mercy of the fact that you didn’t keep the ring on, consequently ending up with both rings, here, to get us out?”
“Theopolis, you’re bothering me. I mean, I don’t want to tell you to shut up, but, shut up!” she tells him.
“You are ignoring a huge sign about not marrying, well, a mortal being.”
“I found the book!” she says, “Look, here.”
“So you are. Ignoring the huge sign,” he says.
“Completely,” she says, “Now look at this,” she pulls the enormous, old book from the shelf and sets it on a table. It is covered in worn, burgundy velvet with gold metal corners. Inside, some of the pages are marked.
Jessica finds a spell she thinks might work, encompassing more than a woman changed into a tree; it is called Enemy Transfiguration: The Troublesome X into Helpless Y Spell. Jessica jots its incantations down on the back of Old Nostramadeus’ old letter and they hurry off to try out the spell on Domina.
“One thing I forgot to tell you,” Jessica mentions along the way to the tree.
“Forgot to mention?” he pretends to rub an imaginary beard, “life everlasting in a barren, unpopulated, resource depleted In Between? One tiny, little thing like that?”
“No!“ she says, “the spell called for a potion.“
“Witches!“ Theopolis scoffs.
“Batwings!“ Jessica tells him.
“Cruel!“ Theop9olis says.
“Cruelty,“ Jessica says. At the tree, Jessica tells Domina they’ve found a spell they’d like to try. If a tree can cry tears of happiness, that’s what this one does; Domina is over-joyed at their kind offer of help. Jessica asks Theopolis to go into bat form, just so they can have batwings (live ones) in their presence during the incantation - for the very best attempt. Nothing. “You can come out,“ Jessica tells Theopolis (of bat form).
“What?!“ he asks, “Nothing?“
“No, sorry“ Jessica says, more to Domina than Theopolis. The two friends sit down, upon the dusty ground, in the slight bit of shade from the tree.
In the world above the In Between, Drew responds quickly to the knock at his door with a serious expression to his face. Jessica’s Father, upon hearing the news that Theopolis now has also not returned, tells Drew he must go to ‘an old haunt’ about which Jessica had written him, immediately. He promises, with a sincere shake of Drew’s hand, he will return. At the sound of this very promise, however, the words safe-keeping and the loss of 50 bucks run through Drew’s mind like a snippet of YouTube video and he stops Jessica’s Father, the Vampire DeAngeliuson, from leaving. He actually blocks the door with his body, arms outstretched.
“I have to go with you,” he pleads, yet to Drew he is demanding. “I can’t let you go without me, this time. I’m going with you. Wherever it is,” he insists.
“I won’t be long,” the vampire smooths, but Drew implores him.
“No one has returned! I am her finance and I will go with you! I must,” he says and grabs his coat off a coat hook near the front door. Although the vampire disagrees, he will soon be (o, sigh) one of the family. Drew follows Jessica’s Father out the door and consequently down the street to the cab told to wait ‘out front’.
At Stygian Downs, the cabbie is paid, and its two passengers get out and walk in a damp, dark misty air toward and underpass where they turn left along a trail which leads to the ancient cantilever, the Stygian Downs Bridge.
“I‘m going to entrance you. You won‘t remember a thing,” Jessica’s Father tells him. He looks into Drew’s eyes until they glaze over, a sort of victimless enchantment and the batwings of the Vampire DeAngeliuson, although more annoyed than ominous, appear and without hoopla he goes through the motions of transporting a mortal, and himself, from the world above to the world below.
Once touched down, batwings unfurled, Drew runs toward the sight of his darling, Jessica, seated on the displeasing ground.
“Hmm,” Theopolis notes as he watches him, “no stones. Where are those trolls?” he wonders outloud.
“Drew!!” Jessica jumps to standing and melts into the arms that wrap around her, hugging and squeezing her, tightly, almost too tightly.
“I was so worried! Jessica, I’ve found you. You’re here! I was so worried.” He explains, hugging and squeezing.
“Hmk-hmk,” Jessica’s Father coughs, interrupting, and Drew lets go.
“Father, I came down here to get the ring. I was going to tell you, Drew has asked me to marry him.”
“Yes, I heard,” he says.
“Well, I’d disobeyed you. I’d jumped, well two times and this time, well, we’re stuck,” she explains.
“And you?” he looks at Theopolis.
“Stuck too,” he says.
“You wore a witch’s way out,” he determines. He looks at Jessica one eyebrow higher than the other, “I told you, you wouldn’t know the way out,” he says to her, “not the vampire way out.”
Jessica looks at Drew, a panicked look.
“He won’t remember,” her Father says, “enchanted.”
Drew exasperates, “I’m so happy to see you, Jessica, and you’re all right. I wasn’t sure you were going to be all in one piece. I’d imagined so many horrible things!” he says. He takes her ring out of his pocket and takes her hand in his, as he moves to place it on her hand, the rings, close together shine their 4th rubies like a serpent’s eyes.
“Eye of serpent, fire of stone,” Jessica says. There is a slight ‘Poof’ sound from behind her and turns around to look at the tree. Where there once stood a tree, there now stands a lovely woman in a terrible, old dress.
“Domina!” Jessica says to the astonished woman who looks at her arms, then her hands. She looks at her dress, then touches her face with both hands, smiling.
“I’m here!” she says, laughing, “I’m really here!” She hugs Jessica and Drew. She thanks Theopolis who admits he really didn’t do anything and she thanks everyone else repeatedly.
“I came he
re to give you this ring,” Jessica tells Drew placing the one she is wearing on his hand, exchanging it for the one that fits her hand - the one he’d been holding for her, the one he’d given when he asked her to marry him.
“Let’s go home - and get married!” Drew tells Jessica.
“Yes, let’s all go home,” her Father says.
Now Theopolis coughs, and motions with his head in the direction of Domina.
“Domina, can you go home?” Jessica asks her.
“I’m not sure I still have a home - it’s been so long,“ she says.
“You’ll come with us, and attend the wedding!“ Jessica says.
“Well, I don’t care,” Domina says, “I’ll risk turning to an ancient and decrepit old bag of coffin bones - to attend Jessica’s wedding.”
Jessica‘s Father disapproves saying, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“We’ll get married, here, then!” Jessica announces. “Everyone I’d want to invite is here, we have the rings, and I certainly wouldn’t want Domina to risk death to attend!“ Then, she remembers Drew.
“I’ll wake him,” she says. She takes his hands in hers and kisses him. “Looks like you’ve been kissed by a vampire,” she says.
“Jessica?” he says.
“Yes,” she asks.
“What are we doing here?”
“We’re going to get married,” she says, “in a fairytale castle, and then we’re going to go home.” She smiles.
“How does that sound?” Jessica’s Father asks him and everyone else.
“Like the best day of my life,” he answers.
“Or the first day of immortality,” Theopolis says.
“Theopolis,” Jessica says, “would it bother you to stay for our wedding?”
“I wouldn’t want to miss it, so sure, I’ll stay,” he says.
Chapter Ten - Blood Wedding
During last minute wedding preparations, Jessica’s Father is more than helpful to have around. He knows ‘quite a bit’ he says about this particular castle and what he calls ‘old haunts like these’, and he certainly knows how to call for a staff. In fact, Ickabod shows up and even Old Nostramadeus himself, and both with one guest each.
Legend of Stygian Downs (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 2) Page 13