Darcy slid into the booth up against me where Grace had been sitting. She reached forward for one of the bottles and poured herself a Cognac. She took a large swallow. “His name is Lux,” she said.
I knew she meant my crush. I hadn’t learned his name until then. I opened my mouth to repeat the monosyllabic name I instantly adored.
“You’re not going to listen to me, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Don’t pursue it, Orly.”
That was the first time she ever said my name.
“If you were mortal it would be fine. You could fall for him like teenagers do and it would be harmless except for a temporary heartbreak. But you’re not mortal, and as an immortal you’re going to have to learn that our development happens more slowly. You’re too young to give your heart away. I don’t mean young as being still shy of adulthood. That’s a mortal concept. I mean you’re young as a vampire and vampire love can only go one of two ways—death or immortality. And as you are still too young to make another of us, your romances can only end in death. So kill him now before you begin to love him too much. It will be better for him to die in your embrace than for you to watch him fade and wither dismally with age.” She put her hand on mine. “Believe me. I know.” She poured herself another Cognac.
In retrospect, of course this thing with Lux was nothing more than puppy love. But when you’re inexperienced and it’s your own puppy love it feels so substantial and real that you believe it will last beyond the grave for all time. Darcy was right. I wasn’t ready to listen to her. I would not kill Lux. Not for the world.
I slid away from Darcy and out of the booth and walked straight to the dance floor, unsure of what I was going to say but determined to make Lux notice me. I didn’t have trouble making my way through the throng of dancers, as they were all weak and easily pushed aside. Lux removed his hand from the waist of the girl he was dancing with when he saw the scores of people going down on the dance floor in my wake. He turned and watched me walk right up to him. He looked like a sweaty angel. His partner looked like a crone.
I put my hand on his forearm and he flinched from the coldness of my touch. His skin was warm and wet. I wanted to taste him.
“Hi, Lux,” I said.
“Uh. Hi,” he struggled to spit out.
The dancers I pushed out of my way were rising to their feet and watching us. The music never stopped.
“You’re a really good dancer.”
“Uh. Thanks.”
“Will you dance with me?”
“Awww. That is so sweet!” the crone squealed.
People began dancing again as if nothing had happened, but I knew bouncers were coming up behind me.
“That’s very nice of you,” Lux said, “but this is a club for grownups, you know? Just wait a few years and I’m sure all the boys will be asking you to dance.” He patted me on the head.
I was grabbed from behind by one of two bouncers, but not roughly, because to them I was a twelve-year-old girl who snuck into a nightclub. They began to lead me off the dance floor. I was still in shock from the rejection and being petted like a puppy, but then I had to tell Lux something and tried to go back to him, but the bouncer held me firm. Too firm. It was irritating. He was an irritant to me. I pulled his hand off my arm and squeezed until he squawked and then I threw him. He was enormous so he knocked down many of the dancers that happened to be in his way as he rolled through them. The other bouncer was on me immediately, but I broke his arm and then his leg and he went down. I turned back to Lux who was now staring at me in horror. The crone let go of him and backed up through the crowd. I stepped toward him.
“I love you,” I said.
He was still stunned by what I had done to the bouncers. More bouncers were on their way. Finally, Lux regained his wits and said, “You’re just a little kid. And a freak.”
I jumped on him and forced him to the floor. Instinct told me to go for his throat. Darcy was right about the love of vampires. Immortality or death. “Love me or die,” I wanted to say but it wasn’t true, I couldn’t kill him, and I knew it. I just wanted to kiss him, but that wasn’t true either. I wanted him to kiss me. Yes. I wanted him to kiss me.
I was grabbed from behind, but this time by much stronger hands belonging to someone who was scented pleasantly. It was Hisato. He probably wanted to get me out of there at full speed, but he didn’t run as fast as he was able to because his speed would appear as inhuman as my strength in front of a crowd of people, so we only moved as quickly as one could as a mortal. But soon enough, I was outside of the club, being placed in the front seat of Hisato’s Porsche, with Grace and Corinne in the back. Darcy was nowhere to be seen. Hisato floored it and we sped out of the parking lot and quickly turned onto a freeway onramp.
“Ha ha!” Hisato screeched. He wasn’t angry. He was laughing hysterically. Grace and Corinne were laughing as well. They had their windows rolled down and their hair blew wildly in the air that streamed into the car as we passed a hundred miles per hour.
“Can’t wait to tell Mommy about this!” Hisato laughed. “I don’t think they’re gonna let you in that club anymore, sweets.”
“Where’s Darcy?”
“You BFFs now?” Hisato asked.
“No.”
He never answered me, but once we had arrived at his house and were sitting in his living room he said, “You know, I really ought to be pissed at you ‘cuz your little tryst kept us all from feeding.”
“Not all of us.”
I turned and saw Darcy standing in one of the doorways that led out to the pool. Hisato went upstairs unbuttoning his shirt and Corinne and Grace followed. Darcy stood before me as I sat on the sofa, shoegazing.
“Are you okay?”
I didn’t look up at her, but I shook my head. I was embarrassed. I knew I had made a fool of myself.
“Don’t make a big thing out of it.”
I looked up at her. “I think I’ll die if I ever see him again.”
“You won’t,” she said, and she bent forward and kissed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Hisato never told Yelena about what happened at the club with Lux. Yelena rarely went to clubs with us anymore and so it was unlikely she would have the opportunity to see we were avoiding that particular club. I forgot about Lux fairly quickly, but I didn’t forget what he represented. In my private thoughts I was tormented, wondering what my life eternal would be like devoid of amorous relationships. Perhaps it wasn’t so dire this year. I was still a young vampire and internally, in mortal years, I was only sixteen. But I knew I would never be more than twelve. How lonely might it be when I am one hundred? Sure, there was the nightly euphoria that came from the blood flows. In the first four years of my immortality I had not consumed any food other than blood. I had no urge to. But Yelena and the others sometimes put food in their mouths. They said it was for the taste, but now I knew it was for the variation. It was proof that someday the bliss and ecstasy of the blood would not be enough. Some night I would want mortal food. Some year I would need romantic love.
In the days that followed that night at the club I began having a recurring dream. I was shut in someplace gray. It was like a silo or a vacuum. It was empty save for a café table with a thin vase upon it that held a single red flower. I stood beside the table waiting for something I didn’t know. Eventually it always occurred to me how short the table seemed even though the table legs seemed a reasonable length. That’s when I would notice the length of my own legs. They were longer, shapely—they were the legs of a woman. I felt my body over. My breasts had swelled and my hips had filled out. Something told me then I was waiting beside this table for my lover. My adult lover. I didn’t know who he or she was, but I knew I was supposed to wait. And then the whispers would begin. It echoed through the gray chamber. “Mirela,” it said. Over and over again, the whisper, “Mirela. Mirela. Mirela.” What did that word mean? Was it the name of my lover? Was it the name of this place I was in? Was it the name of the
flower? I wanted to touch the flower and reached for it but, with my fingertips only millimeters away from the stem, the silo began to rumble. The table fell over. The vase fell off but didn’t shatter. I lost my footing. It was as if the silo had toppled over but had no ground on the outside on which to land. I tumbled within it, being thrown this way and that, yet I never hit the sides and neither table nor vase ever touched me, and the flower was always out of reach. Gravity no longer existed and I would try to swim to it as if getting hold of the flower would make my confined universe stop spinning. Eventually, the smooth gray walls of the silo would pulse and slowly reveal texture. Uneven lines formed upon it, outlining the contours of large gray stones, stacked high as if laid by a mason. It was as if the silo had turned into a stone tower without windows or doors, like an oubliette. As the tumbling continued, the masonry would begin to crumble, stones falling, closing in on me, but never crushing me; they just pinned me in, one boulder brick after another until I absolutely could not move. It was then I would wake, within my casket, which by comparison felt spacious. I had that dream nine times over two weeks and I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but what stayed with me most poignantly was the adult version of me I would never become, and the lovely flower I would never reach, and that single mysterious word: Mirela.
I never mentioned the dreams to Yelena. I feared my interpretation, or her interpretation, of the dreams might hurt her. When I woke from the dream the ninth time, I opened the casket cover and sat up and looked to my left and saw that Yelena’s coffin was already open and she was not in it. At the top of the stairs, the secret door was closed, shutting me in. It wasn’t unusual for Yelena to wake before me but ordinarily, she would leave the door open. I tried to pull on it, but it wouldn’t budge. Not even my excessive strength could move it. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. I tried listening to see what was going on elsewhere in the house, but I heard nothing.
I descended the stairs again and shut the cover of my casket and replaced the lid on Yelena’s coffin. I looked over at Marcel’s long, black, polished coffin. It was never dusty. None of our funerary boxes ever were. I’d never seen Berthold clean them but knew he must. Perhaps he did it while we were inside, sleeping. I stepped over to Marcel’s coffin and pressed my hand on its lid. It felt neither cold nor warm. I lifted my hand off of it and watched as my fingerprints slowly evaporated. In the four years I had slept in this chamber, I had never seen inside Marcel’s coffin. I looked to the spiral staircase to make sure Yelena wasn’t there, but she was. She stood there looking at me. I don’t know how long she had been there. She didn’t appear angry that I had touched her lover’s coffin. She even smiled, but only with her lips; she didn’t show her teeth.
“Orly, come up.”
As I ascended the staircase I asked, “Why did you shut me in?”
“I’m sorry for that. It was for your own protection. I had to make sure you were safe.”
“Safe from what?”
She didn’t answer, but she took my hand when I reached the top of the stairs and led me out through her closet. As we exited her bedroom, I turned to my left to head to my own room.
“Where are you going?” she asked me.
“I want to scribble,” I answered, and she knew I meant scribbling her as we were alone.
“Not tonight, love. Come with me.”
It was the first time in all our years together that she ever declined to be scribbled.
When we entered the living room, I was shocked. Marcel was there. The vampire who, years prior, had taken the body from me off Sunset Boulevard—tall, pale, with long black hair and green eyes—was standing near the fireplace where a small fire was burning. Again, he wore outdated clothing.
“Orly, I’d like you to meet Zacharias Underland.”
“Hello again, princess,” he said.
“You’re not Marcel?” I asked.
He smiled, showing his fangs. “Heavens, no. I’m no philosopher.”
I turned to Yelena. “Is he your friend?”
Yelena looked to Zacharias.
“Of course I’m her friend,” he said. “And I hope I’m your friend too.” He winked at me.
I didn’t know if I should trust him. I looked to Yelena again. “Is he your elder?”
“My, she’s a curious one, isn’t she?”
Yelena put her hand on my shoulder. “No, he is not my elder. But we are close in age. You needn’t worry, Orly. Zacharias won’t harm you.” Yelena looked at Zacharias. “Why don’t we all sit down?”
We sat on the L-shaped sectional sofa, Yelena beside me, and Zacharias at the far end of the sofa. Intuition told me there was nothing intimate between them. Yelena had poured us all Scotch in tumblers. Yelena and Zacharias brought their tumblers to their mouths, swallowed and placed their tumblers back on the coffee table. I then picked mine up.
“Zacharias has come to tell us we will be having a visitor soon. From Romania.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Her name is Mirela Cobălcescu.”
I flinched when I heard the word from my dream. I’m sure Yelena noticed, but she didn’t show it. So it was a name of a woman. “Who is she?” I asked.
“She is the queen of our bloodline, we three belong to her.”
“How come he knew she was coming and you didn’t?”
“What makes you think I didn’t know?” Yelena answered. She was right, I had no reason to think she didn’t know.
“I just thought you would have told me.”
“I am telling you.”
“Is Marcel coming with her?” I asked.
“No. He is not.”
“He’s part of her bloodline though too, right?”
“Yes. Mirela made Marcel and Marcel made us and I made you. I want you and Zacharias to know each other better. To become friends.”
Zacharias smiled at me again. It looked different this time. More sincere. But I didn’t know if that’s because it was actually more sincere or because I began to trust him since Yelena seemed to and because she said he was part of our bloodline.
“I will be gone for a few nights, Orly. Zacharias will stay here with you. He will protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Child, he will protect you mostly from yourself,” she said, and kissed me, lovingly.
“Where are you going?”
“There are some things I need to do before Mirela arrives.”
“She’ll be alright, Orly.” Zacharias said. “And you and I will have fun. We’ll feed. You’ll see I’m more like you than I am like Yelena.”
*
Zacharias waited in the living room while I helped Yelena pack a bag in her bedroom. She would be taking Marcel’s coffin with her, which told me she was going to see him. She still didn’t tell me where she was going, but she did tell me Berthold would be going with her so when I fed, Zacharias and I would have to dispose of the bodies ourselves.
“When you meet Mirela, you must call her Imparateasa unless she permits you to address her by name.”
“Why? What does that mean?”
“It’s Romanian for Empress.”
“I have to know Romanian?”
“No. She understands English.”
“Have you met her before?”
“Yes. Briefly, before I came to America.”
“What is she like?”
“She is ancient and wise and very beautiful. Do not ever underestimate her.”
“And she’s the first vampire?”
“No, but she is the oldest survivor in our bloodline so she is considered our source.”
“So there’s other vampires older?”
“Yes, but only two.”
“Why did you call her a survivor?”
“Because Orly, there was once a war. A great war amongst our kind over four thousand years ago. The mortals knew nothing of it. We slaughtered ourselves. The reasons for the war are unclear today. But at the end of it, in the whole world
, there were only eleven of us left. There was a truce and those eleven began the bloodlines we know today. Every one of us belongs to one of those bloodlines. Mirela was one of those last eleven vampires. Her brood is large. Her bloodline is great and her blood is infinitely powerful.”
“Mom, there’s something I didn’t tell you.”
Yelena stopped packing a dress and looked at me.
“I’ve heard the name Mirela before.”
“Have you?”
“Yeah. In dreams.”
“Then she knows you are here. Perhaps you are the reason she is coming.”
“What? Me? No. Why would she come for me?”
“With our Imparateasa you never can tell. She only allows us to know the things she wants us to know. What happened in your dream?”
“Not much. There was this flower on a table. And I would hear her name. That’s about it.”
“You had this dream more than once.”
It wasn’t a question. I don’t know how she knew that.
“Yeah. Nine times I think that I can remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought it was silly. They were just dreams.”
She looked at me. I don’t think she believed me, but after a moment she smiled and touched my face.
“You’re a sweet girl, Orly.”
I heard the front door open. Berthold had let himself in.
“I need to go,” Yelena said.
“Mom, wait. I have something for you.” I ran to my room and came back with four scribbles. On the reverse sides of them, there were no invented falsehoods of guilt. There were only names and addresses. They were innocents but I knew my mom would be hungry and so I didn’t let her in on that truth. She packed them in her bag, shut it, and then hugged me tightly.
*
Zacharias and I went out to feed, but we didn’t go prowling around a crowded nightclub like Hisato and his girls did. Instead, we parked and roamed neighborhoods with shadowy overhanging trees that blocked out most of the light coming from the street lamps. We searched for late night walkers.
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