Golden Vampire

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Well, here she was, about to knock on his front door. She’d find out soon enough which way this was to go down.

  There were silver bullets in her gun and extra custom-made rounds in her bag. The sharpened stake lay in her parka pocket. She wore GoreTex boots with plenty of tread for adhering to slippery surfaces, and had brought a climbing rope she knew how to use. Short of burning incense in a chapel, along with a few muttered prayers, she was as ready as she’d ever be to face the devil in his own den.

  “I see a flat spot,” Stan announced. “Not exactly a landing pad. More like a missing driveway.”

  He banked, and leveled out the chopper. “Do you see anyone down there, Jesse?”

  “Who in their right mind would be down there?” she snapped, then regretted it. Stan’s jaw was tight. His hands were white-knuckling the controls.

  “If,” he said hoarsely, with a quick, meaningful glance in her direction, “you think I’m leaving you here, you are mistaken.”

  “You forgot the key word, Stan.”

  “What’s that? Please?”

  “Boss. The key word here is boss, and it applies to me, whether I like it or not.”

  Another glance from Stan that she felt, rather than saw. “Whether or not you like it?” he said.

  She nodded. “That’s no pleasure palace down there, but it’s my plan to go in, and I’m sticking to it.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “I’m going alone.” There, she’d said it at last, point-blank. No taking the words back now. No misunderstandings.

  “Then you’ll have to fight me first,” Stan argued.

  “I have a gun,” Jesse pointed out.

  “I’m bigger and stronger than you are, and eat guns for breakfast.”

  Jesse would have laughed at that, any other time. She wished it was that time now.

  “I’ll need what strength I have for whatever I find in there,” she said soberly. “Fighting with you is stupid and draining.”

  Stan fell silent.

  “I’ll have your back, then,” he finally declared, turning the chopper so that its front windshield faced the castle, setting the bird down in a flurry of displaced snow. “Everybody needs someone at their back. Even you.”

  His statement brought an unexpected moistness to Jesse’s eyes. She was, she thought, becoming a whimpering idiot, and turned her head to hide the gathering tears, refusing to let them fall. Her fear had escalated. She’d bitten her lip, and the cold made the puncture sting. Her hands, minutes ago quiet on her knees, were shaking noticeably. But she would follow her plan. Stan would get away, and she would face this. It would be step two in confronting her past, whatever the outcome.

  “Stan,” she began, her unspoken sentence fading with the idea of how absurd what she was about to say might sound to him. “I have to do this for reasons you know nothing about. I owe it to someone I loved.”

  Stan’s big head swung toward her. “Whoever that is, they’d be even happier to know I didn’t listen to you or leave you here.”

  She did not have the energy to continue the argument. And she could not explain anything to the man sitting beside her. Any further show of friendship on Stan’s part, and she was afraid she’d cave. Already the icy air flooding in when she pushed the door open made her want to scream. The skin surrounding her scar pounded, keeping time with her pulse.

  In a hundred rooms, there were at least a thousand windows, she estimated. Was the glorious bastard with the golden hair observing her from one of them? Sharpening his canines?

  Tearing off the headset, Jesse jumped out of the chopper, landing squarely on both feet in the slush. Stan was powering the bird down; she waved at him, pointed adamantly to the sky. “Go,” she shouted above the whir of the blades. “Please,” she added. “Please, Stan.”

  And Stan, processing the direct command, gave her a look of sad weariness, then finally nodded his head.

  Standing rigidly against the wind and the debris the chopper kicked up, with her legs apart, her head lifted and her eyes blurring with frozen tears as Stan did what he was told, Jesse watched him lift off—against his better judgment, and against hers.

  She thought about all the times she had successfully reunited missing children with their loved ones, and how often she had faced dangerous bastards and nutcases crazier than squirrels. Why not, she thought, go all the way by confronting the undead?

  Taking in a big gulp of icy air, Jesse pressed a hand to her chest and whispered “testing” into the microphone to make sure her vocal cords were working.

  She had come.

  What had it cost her to do so?

  Lance moved quickly through the castle’s passages toward where the chopper had left his guest. Her presence was bright, like a night-light in the dark.

  He had not called her to him. It had been her decision to seek him out. Did that make her extraordinarily brave, or foolish?

  Tuning his ears to the fading sounds of the helicopter, far off now as it flew over the forest, Lance’s interest began to simmer.

  Jesse was alone.

  Damn her, alone.

  He could try to protect her from the creatures she sought, but who would protect him … from her?

  Hesitating in his flight down a long stone stairway, feeling her through several layers of granite as if she stood before him, in person, Lance resolved that others in the distance were also sure to turn their attention this way. From the underground dens where his off-kilter relatives hid from the light, those vampires would soon realize that humans rode in helicopters. With hearing similar to radar, they’d be able to perceive the chopper’s waves of displaced air in the quiet landscape surrounding their hiding places as being unusual. Even those knowledgeable about himself—his strength, age and power—might venture this way by nightfall, if hungry enough.

  At the worst, he had until dark to speak with Jesse. At best, if he could quickly get her inside the castle’s thick walls, he might have twenty-four hours with her before having to lock her up and toss the key, for her own safety.

  That was, after all, why he had lured her here. To keep her safe.

  Sighing over the image of Jesse being locked up anywhere without a fight, Lance hurried on. The little hybrid deserved to know the truth, and that she had built her life around a false premise. She hadn’t lived, after her brutal attack, because of any miracle of therapy, but because of what she’d been given. A gift that had left her with a foot in both worlds. How was he to know that this gift would also insure that she’d never completely fit in with the rest of the human race? How was she to understand that, if he didn’t enlighten her?

  Yet telling her about his world, including her in it by confessing what he’d done to make her this way, meant he would have to break the ancient oath ruling his own existence. Explaining what had happened to her would mean telling her about himself. A risky concept.

  Confessions had never before been a temptation. Not once since his creation, his rebirth, had he uttered words to define himself, and what he had become. Rather than tell his story to the other woman he had loved, so long ago, he had driven that woman away.

  Maybe, he thought now with a powerful lunge in stride, he just hadn’t loved the other one enough. He didn’t recall ever feeling like this: anxious, energized, wary. Jesse had tugged at his heartstrings early on, and continued to do so.

  So little, the young Jesse had been. So perfect, so frightened and brave. It was a shock to know that she still had a hold on him, and that he thought of nothing else but seeing her again, being near her, if only for a few more hours. True enough, by giving her a sampling of his blood, he had stretched the boundaries of his oath as a Guardian. Still, he had been careful not to truly harm Jesse either time.

  He who had survived duels, tournaments, battles, plagues, wars and the sluggish passage of time, at last felt the residual beating of a heartbeat that had been dulled for centuries. He was drawn to the woman he’d shaped into something special, provoked
by his own creation.

  He’d been famous in some lifetimes, in his own way, he thought as he headed down the staircase, and anonymous in others. He had been both honored and despised, reviled and rejoiced. And always alone. Jesse wasn’t going to change that. Nevertheless, his choices were to keep the vow of silence fully, or break it. His options were to help keep Jesse alive by locking her safely away, or else tell her everything and hope she’d leave the country before anything worse happened to her.

  There was a third alternative he didn’t want to contemplate. A terrible one. He could give her more of what she’d need in order to survive this fight. More blood. His blood. Shore her up, further the connection as the blood built up within her to the level of a new strength. If not actually bringing her over to his world, coming precariously close.

  Either way, kept in the dark or dipped in the light of understanding, the hunt for Elizabeth Jorgensen would be Jesse’s coming of age. As well as his own, perhaps.

  “What will it be, Jesse?”

  Hunger for her filled him as he strode on, that hunger reminiscent of raging need that was nearly all-consuming and an entity in and of itself. He had helped to create the very thing that attracted him now. He had done this.

  And she was here, within reach.

  His dark-haired, brown-eyed hybrid stood there, unmoving, as he threw open the great oaken door with a force that echoed through the castle’s foundations. Never ready for the full effect she had on him, Lance stopped abruptly.

  Out of her element, Jesse looked small, not much more than a child, as she stood a few paces away, bundled in a heavy orange coat, with a green canvas bag dotting the snow by her feet. A courageous, fierce child, who also looked cold, frightened and uncertain.

  Although she held no weapon in her hand, it didn’t take an immortal’s keen senses to know she’d be prepared. He smelled the iron of the gun at her back, and more weapons were stored in the bag. Searching her face, noting her downcast eyes, he said, “You must be frozen. Won’t you come inside?”

  Must get you inside. You are way too conspicuous out here.

  Her reply was terse. “You’re going to play the part of host? Lord of this castle?”

  “It is my home,” he said.

  “Really? Maybe you’ve just taken the place over from its former occupants.”

  “I’m afraid it actually is my home, lock, stock and barrel, as the saying goes. My refuge, if you will.”

  “Yet you told me about it.”

  “Actually, I didn’t.”

  He watched Jesse process that, knew she delved back in memory to seeing him in the meadow. He also saw that she wasn’t going to ease up. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other to gain better purchase on the icy ground.

  “How many humans have you invited here? I wonder,” she said, perhaps rhetorically, not voicing the rest of her thoughts on the subject.

  “Two. Humans,” he replied, using her delineation.

  “You said to trust you, so I suppose you won’t warn me if this is a mistake,” she said.

  With his gaze riveted to her chilled, expressionless face, Lance fought the desire to make her look up. One little suggestion, and you will do as I ask. But then, what sort of host would I be?

  “Isn’t it a bit late for this conversation?” he remarked. “I did mention that your quest for the missing girl, in this instance, is a mistake. You knew the danger in coming here, and yet here you are, alone. Unless you have reinforcements in the trees, awaiting your signal.”

  He didn’t have to tear his attention from her to know that wasn’t the case, and that no one waited in the distance. It was just Jesse and a tiny arsenal of weapons that he could flick away with a simple hand gesture if he chose.

  He wondered again why she had dared this, and if her blood had dictated this meeting without her knowledge.

  “Why don’t the officials in the city know about you?” she asked, her discomfort obvious in her tone. “Does anyone around here know about you, and what you are?”

  “Some of them do,” he admitted. “However, it has been a long time since I had contact with any of my neighbors. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of contact when I did.”

  Jesse appeared to be surprised by that. Her beautiful brown bloodshot eyes opened wider.

  “So,” she said, “if I had mentioned to the men at the meeting this morning about the vampires holding Elizabeth, they would have understood? Believed?”

  “They wouldn’t be here, as you are, but yes, they may have understood. Some of them, anyway.”

  “Why wouldn’t they have been here?”

  “I seriously doubt you’d want to know the answer to that question.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure I would,” she insisted.

  “Then I’ll tell you, if you’ll come inside.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready for that. How about if we talk out here?”

  Lance understood her reason for being on his door step. He had anticipated this very thing. She had come to him prepared to barter for whatever information he had regarding the Jorgensen girl. Short of that, she planned to use the weapons she’d brought with her to gain the information.

  She wasn’t sure he was telling the truth, and trying to gauge which way this current confrontation was to go down. If it turned out he had something concrete to offer, she was, by her presence here, willing to offer up something to return the favor. That thing very possibly was herself.

  Lance almost grinned at the absurdity of it all. In order to help her, he had to earn her trust. Not tossing her over the side of the hotel obviously hadn’t done the trick.

  This courageous beauty was, in essence, agreeing to sacrifice herself for Elizabeth Jorgensen’s return. Make a trade. What drove her to this? Her own hopelessness coming to the fore? Joy of watching the happy family reunions of others?

  Her willingness to sacrifice herself dazzled him. She had put her blood to good use, and for decent causes. She would be a respectable adversary for anyone on the wrong side of the law. Yet her presence here also indicated that her wounds went deeper than he had at first seen, if her own life mattered so little to her.

  There was a certain recklessness in her stance, he noted. Her face was pale, but her eyes, red-rimmed from lack of sleep, still shone. Jesse’s vendetta against the monsters responsible for the death of her family had been temporarily shoved into the background, overtaken by her need to help another young girl fight an unknown fate.

  Jesse was living vicariously through the victims she helped. In this case, Elizabeth Jorgensen. In the happy endings of others, if there were any, Jesse might imagine she gained closure on her own issues—though this was never really the case.

  She knew what vampires did. She maintained no illusions about what would happen to her if she met with them, after her brief encounter with himself and the scavenger in the city’s alley. She realized all too well that she couldn’t stand up to a vampire, really, and that in a battle of wills and muscular strength, he would win.

  Yet here she stood.

  His admiration for her was no small thing. For the purity and strength of her convictions alone, he wanted to reach out to her, comfort her, as he would have done when he was mortal. But he wasn’t that person now.

  Lance’s hands fisted, a subconscious tensing. Jesse didn’t want consolation, and hadn’t come here to get it. Nor would she accept any that he offered. In her eyes, he was the enemy. She was here for information, ready to barter whatever she could, her face as white as the snow at her feet, but undeterred.

  How many successful cases and happy reunions will it take for you to find peace, Jesse?

  With my blood inside you, helping to drive you, is peace possible? Alas, I’ve never found it.

  “Very well,” he said, feeling a surge of caution about telling her anything right then, drawn to Jesse with an intensity that set his teeth on edge. “I’ll tell you some thing, a reward for being here.”

  The need to be close to
her wouldn’t benefit anyone in the long run, not her, not himself, he concluded. But he couldn’t take his eyes from her. Although he was loath to hurt her further, hurt is what she had come here for. And there was always a chance the Jorgensen girl would still be alive when they found her.

  For now, no matter what their agendas might be, he had to get her inside the castle walls, contain her scent and her presence here and keep those things from reaching others. He needed time with her in order to decide how to proceed.

  “In the past, certain officials in this city made a deal with the creatures you call vampires,” he explained, since it was clear Jesse wouldn’t budge without some show of faith on his end.

  He watched her features fall with just those few words.

  “A deal with vampires? You’re lying,” she said.

  Lance shook his head. “You asked for the truth, and came a long way to get it. At my invitation, and as my guest, I see no reason to lead you astray.”

  “Can’t you?” she snapped. “When I can think of a few reasons without trying hard.”

  She’d bitten her lip. A drop of blood, now darkened with cold, beaded beneath her teeth like a ruby gemstone. Lance took a step forward, catching himself before taking another.

  “What deal?” Jesse demanded in a voice that had noticeably lowered in volume, either from cold or disbelief. “What kind of deal would anyone make with a vampire?”

  “You are frozen. Your heart is sluggish,” he complained.

  “Screw that. Tell me what you know. Clarify.”

  All right, Jesse. Another hint.

  “A deal was struck for the officials not to notice a few missing people each year,” he said, then waited for her reaction, which came swiftly.

  “No!” she shouted, horrified as the meaning of that disclosure settled in. “For what? What could possibly cause anyone to turn their backs or make a deal like that? Killing innocent people?”