Not sex as he hoped. “Can I throw them over the balcony? More fun.”
“No!” Bronte snapped. “Not the balcony, not even throw. You would just show them the door.”
“The doors are plainly visible, Bronte. That would be a wasted effort.”
Zachary chuckled.
“The Master Vampire is the host and generally keeps the peace,” Bronte said. “Does that give you any ideas, Darkwyn?”
“Yes, it does. I will replace Ogden as handyman.”
“No, you’ll be my new Master Vampire. That’s your apartment, by the way.” She pointed to the door opposite hers at the end of the hall. “It faces front like ours.”
“Hey,” Zachary said. “To hit both apartments, front and back, that bolt of lightning had to be coming straight down from above the Phoenix, almost like a claw with us in its grip.”
“How old are you?” Darkwyn asked.
“Ninety-nine, my next birthday.”
“Always a confusing answer.”
“You should talk. What happened to the gash on Bronte’s—”
“I don’t know enough about vampires to be one, thanks.”
“Zachary,” Bronte said, herding them toward her apartment. “Break out the Dracula DVDs and let’s have a bloody brunch while Darkwyn gets a crash course.”
“Which ones?” Zachary asked, sorting DVDs.
“All of them. Darkwyn, I’m Vampiress and I need a Master Vampire today. It’s the only way to protect me from the male vamps who’d try to make a play for me, otherwise.”
What she needed, he thought, was a bodyguard in the truest sense, to protect her from Killian’s evil. “I’d rather take the handyman job, but I could still protect you.”
“That job’s taken. Ogden will be back. The apartment across from this one is for the Master Vampire I hire.”
Darkwyn thought about that. “Fine, then I’ll live with you.”
“She already has a roommate,” Zachary said. “Me.”
Out of the boy’s range, Darkwyn gave Bronte a look filled with promise. They both wanted more of what they’d shared last night. He needed to be near her to protect her from Killian, and to take on her life quest, still a mystery. “I will watch the vampire movies,” Darkwyn said with a sigh. “But no promises beyond that.”
Half an hour into a movie, and two bowls of Count Chocula later, Darkwyn hit pause on the remote. “What made you get into this freaky business? Did somebody curse you?”
Zachary shrugged. “We owned the building, and Bronte needed a job where she could take care of me. This is Salem. Dracula’s Castle catered to tourists but not vamp role players or Salem’s real vamp community. We saw a need. We had a need. We filled both.”
“And,” Bronte added, “it seemed a natural choice. We grew up around blood and guts.”
So had he, fighting wars, feeding his dragon self, but—“You? Blood and guts?”
Zachary gave Bronte a look, before turning to him. “ ‘The family’ owned a slaughterhouse.”
EIGHTEEN
After the second vampire movie ended, Bronte’s heart skipped when Darkwyn got up to stalk her. He grasped the arms of her chair and looked into her eyes. “I vant to drink your blood.” He used a corny Transylvanian accent, his attention enough to make her remember the night just passed.
“At Drak’s,” she said, trying not to be charmed, “we’re modern vampires.”
“Do you count yourself among them?”
“No, but you’ll meet actors, writers, giants of industry, people with clout. It’ll be a regular who’s who of vampires in Salem.”
“So your vampires wear pinstripe suits and ear bugs to talk to invisible friends?”
Zachary scoffed. “Ear buds.”
“Ignore the boy, Darkwyn. Yes, some of my vampires are businessmen.”
“Do they nibble on your neck?”
“Of course not.” Though she’d let him nibble and nuzzle, lick and suck—oh the memories.
“What the heck are you two doing?” Zachary snapped. “She’s offering you a job, not herself as a meal.”
“Zachary, we aren’t doing anything,” Bronte said. “We’re—”
“Drooling in your hearts!”
Darkwyn looked from one of them to the other. “Do you two read minds?”
Zachary slammed the box of cereal into the cupboard. “I know how a man thinks.”
Darkwyn approached the boy. “Well, you don’t know how I think. Are you a man in a kid suit, or what?”
Zachary whipped his head around.
“Both of you, stop,” Bronte said. “Zachary, there’s no pretense with Darkwyn. He’s real—to a fault. What you see is what you get. You can’t blame him for having a gleam in his eye.” She stood to approach.
“Don’t touch me,” Darkwyn said, raising his hands. “The loathing in Zachary’s expression scares me.”
“Zachary, go watch cartoons,” Bronte said, and the boy left the apartment, slamming her door and another and another.
“He’ll watch in Ogden’s apartment.” She grabbed Darkwyn’s lapels and slid them between her fingers. “I may be able to read you, a bit, sort of, sense your needs is more like it, but I still don’t know whether you’ll take the job that I so desperately need you to.”
“I’ll do it,” Darkwyn said, capturing her hands, silently offering pleasure—at least she hoped that’s what his shuttered expression and bedroom eyes meant.
“I’ll be Master Vampire to your Mistress Vampiress,” he said, stepping back, “but don’t torture me with those vampire movies. Point me to the nearest stack of vampire books and I’ll learn what I must.”
“Yay.” She’d like to kiss Darkwyn, but with Zachary acting like a watchdog, she’d wait till they were alone. “I have to get you fitted for a tux and cape for tonight. You can’t spend the day reading. You’ll have to wing it.”
Wing it! Darkwyn aborted a surprised laugh, grabbed his fire-warm chest, and belched smoke.
“Now that’s a neat trick,” she said. “Don’t do it in public.”
“No problem, like nobody’s business, I can wing it.” They flicked glances at each other, given the fact that Zachary had returned and stood in the apartment doorway, arms crossed.
An hour later, on the way home from the tux shop, in her hearse with Drak’s and Fangs for the Memories advertised on the side, Darkwyn read the bag of vampire books she’d brought.
“Read fast much?” she asked, truly impressed.
“Always,” he said. “Little trick that surprised even Vivica.”
“I can see why.”
“What torture next?” he asked on their return. “I believe I’d take any kind of torture . . . if you wield it. Puck was wrong that first day,” he admitted. “If I had run, I believe my soul would have missed yours for eternity.”
Feeling bemused, a smile forming in her heart, Bronte sighed. “I’ll take you through Fangs for the Memories, our fun/horror house tourist attraction, then I’ll show you the fairgrounds before we get you ready for tonight.”
“No time for a quickie?”
“You learned that fast. But you couldn’t be quick, given the size of your talent, if your life depended on it.”
“My life might depend on it. Once you feed a dragon, he needs to eat more regularly.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me another.”
“This dragon would also like a long, slow look in daylight at the tattoo on your inner thigh. A black sword on scarlet dragon wings; it’s a dragon slayer tat. Are you secretly looking to kill me, your very own dragon?”
She slipped her arm through his, wishing she could keep him as her own, but even if she wanted to, life had nothing good in store. She sighed and led him down the sidewalk fronting the Phoenix. “I would gladly slay you, Darkwyn Dragonelli. I’d slay you with pleasure.”
He slowed. “So your tattoo is a symbol of riding your magick dragon?”
“Yes, a warrior dragon with a fine sword.” She batted her la
shes, but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit she was troubled by a few aspects of this man, like his dragon references. Yet, she found herself fascinated by him.
“Seriously,” Bronte said, “the nuclear sex we had last night, and the fact that you refer to yourself as a dragon—” She cringed inwardly. “They top the list of things we need to talk about, sooner rather than later.”
“Anytime, dear Bronte. What about the butterfly tat at the base of your spine?”
“Ah, now that symbolizes freedom, to which I aspire.”
Darkwyn raised her hand and kissed it. “You must put ‘Bronte’s need for freedom’ on your list of things to talk about. Because if that is your goal, I am here to make it happen.”
“Like you can fly me to the stars, you can make it happen.”
NINETEEN
Darkwyn tried to stay open-minded while Bronte pressed a number code into a little box and unlocked an outside door at the far left side of the building.
Inside, she turned to him. “This is the entry to Fangs for the Memories. A ticket taker works here when it’s open.” She unlocked a wide, thick carved inner door with a pointed top, two halves that opened at the center with an old-world creak.
On the other side, after she locked it, he pinned her against it, read the need in her eyes, and used his new knowledge to turn a quickie into an eternity of pleasure. It took no more than a fast rise and a couple of tempestuous, mutual multiples before Bronte slid down the door beside him and placed her head on his shoulder.
Catching their breath and righting their clothes took longer than the act.
“A girl could sure get used to that,” she whispered.
As could a dragon, he thought. Their kiss lasted longer than their mating.
“More?” he suggested.
She shook her head and rose on shaky legs. “Tourists are due.”
Dragon’s blood!
She led him along a dark hall, his arm around her waist.
“We’re starting at the left of the building,” she said. “We’ll cross a basement of Fangs for the Memories exhibits, then exit to the fairgrounds. Tourists leave Fangs and the fairgrounds via the matching hall at the opposite side of the building.”
“Makes sense,” he said, teasing her beneath a breast.
“In this hall,” she said on a thready whisper, “are dioramas of vampire carnage.”
“Your bloodsuckers are as fake as your movies. Even the drippy candles are. But you,” he said, stroking her higher, “are magnificent and real.”
“You sure proved that. Mmm,” she said. “Fake candles because of Salem’s fire laws. Fangs is for tourists. Drak’s, on the floor above, now that’s as real as the vamps and LARPers, or role players, want it to be.”
“How can it be real?” he asked, cupping her breasts. “Vampires are not.”
“The authors of those books you read earlier, and the vampires you’ll meet tonight, believe dragons aren’t real. You’ll see fake vampires, they’ll see a fake dragon. It’s a wash. Fake is fake. Though I know you’re not a fake man, because—”
“You like my tricky dick?”
She leaned in. “I do like it.”
He shrugged. “Well, I grant your point about dragons, however incorrect.” He swooped in to kiss her, but jumped when the cover of a casket popped up beside them, and a campy vamp sat up, hissed, and showed its fangs.
Bronte opened her hands toward the dummy as if she sent that sudden colorful burst of snap, crackle, and light the casket’s way.
“If cartoon fireworks are all I can conjure,” she said, “might as well make it work for me.”
Darkwyn raised a questioning brow. “Conjure?”
“I threw the bit of faulty magick at it to go with the laugh track.”
Darkwyn admired her resourcefulness. “It was rather effective and unexpected for entertainment value.”
“Maybe I’ll incorporate it into all the displays down here. I never thought my backassward witchcraft would be of much use.”
“Are you a witch?”
“In training, sort of. Mostly, I’m the class clown, a blow-it-up kind of witch and I usually end up with soot on my face. I have no natural talent for the craft. I tried to learn for self-protection, but no go.”
“Well, you have me for protection now.” He liked that her eyes went dreamy and she moved closer after he said that.
Meanwhile, Jagidy, his guardian dragon, smoke-tested the dummy and got white smoke from the lifeless thing.
He nearly told Bronte the joke, but he guessed it wasn’t time yet. Besides, her expression held a clear invitation, so Darkwyn swooped in for a kiss, wrapping his arms around her and putting his hard desire into it.
Bronte moaned and pulled away. “My paying customers are due any minute.”
He walked beside her and ran a hand along her spine.
She half heartedly pushed him away. “Will you please—”
“Sure I will,” he said, enjoying this having someone to play with. A woman of his own.
She stopped in front of a closed casket, standing on end, with a sign that said, STEP INSIDE A SPELL.
“What’s this, then?” he asked. “A dead end?”
“Do what the sign says. Open the door and stand inside.”
“Get in with me?”
“There’s only room for one.”
“We can become one when the door closes.”
“It doesn’t stay closed long enough even for the world’s fastest and most amazing quickie. But if you’re afraid to go in alone, use the ramp for scaredy-cats.”
“I am no cat!” Darkwyn stepped in, watched the casket door close him in, and felt the back squeal open, slowly, so he couldn’t fall out.
He exited to a large dank room with a people-sized spiderweb. No way out except through the center of the web, as indicated by the large floor arrow, but he waited for Bronte.
When the casket door opened, he turned and swooped in for a kiss—but stopped, fast!
A short, skinny, blue-haired old lady giggled. “I like this feature. You’re quite the hunky doodle dandy.”
“Thank you,” Darkwyn said. “All in a day’s work. Just follow the arrow through the spiderweb. There you go.”
Bronte now stood watching, her eyes dancing in a new and amazing way.
“You enjoyed that,” he said.
“You have no idea.”
He scooped her in his arms, opened his mouth over hers, and she wrapped her legs around him, still as hungry for him as he for her. “Hint,” she whispered against his lips. “When the door squeals from the other side, the next tourist has gotten in.”
“And it could be anybody, I learned the hard way.” He resumed the kiss and walked them toward the web’s center, her legs around his waist, their lips locked.
Halfway, he leaned her against a cobwebby pillar and had his wicked way with her mouth.
“Keep it up and you’ll bust out of those jeans,” she said, abrading the evidence.
Given the extent of his interest, he should keep his back to the next person out. For sanity’s sake, he set Bronte down, then she dragged him running toward the narrowing center of the sticky web, and as they arrived, a giant glowing black spider jumped out at them from the opposite side.
Darkwyn shouted in surprise, and Bronte chuckled, highly entertained. “I put that crackling blush on Spider Joe just now. I like it. Guess my half-baked magick is good for something.”
“I was not scared,” he said, “My mind was—”
“In your shorts. That’s why I knew it’d surprise you. Step through, then we go down those stairs to the catacombs.”
“Is there a private room down there?”
“No. But there are private caskets. People occasionally try them out.”
“Sick bastards.”
In the crypt, blood dripped down walls, a pipe organ played a funeral dirge, while along the way grotesque, clawed skeletons posed here and there, including on top, or
inside, ornate sarcophagi. He and Bronte passed a private stock “blood wine” cellar, and a display of famous vamps’ wall-mounted fangs. She added a few of her magick-spell touches along the way, quite pleased at the colorful, light-show-type results, her delight endearing her to him more every second.
“Ah,” Darkwyn said. “I hear happy music.”
“I don’t hear it.”
“I have keen senses. All dragons do.”
“We were going to talk about that.”
“Sure. Anytime. This is festive,” he said stepping out, embracing the sunshine, and enjoying the sights at the fairgrounds.
“From here,” she said, “you can go to Bite Me for vampire food, eat and drink in our cemetery picnic area, or inside Bite Me. Tourists can skip Fangs for the Memories and use their trolley tickets to get in the fairgrounds.”
“Excuse me. Vampire food?”
“Blood pudding, blood sausage, blood soup. Ethnic foods prepared different ways. We have steak tartar, hold the tar. Bloody claws are curly fries and catsup. Dead cow’s a burger. Bangers and elbows: macaroni and sausage. Pub food.”
“Sounds delicious.” And he meant it. At the fairgrounds, Bronte, the Vampiress of Drak’s, was treated like the Queen of the Dead, and she played to her followers, even signed autographs.
After her fans left, she apologized and pointed to a giant wheel standing on its side with people inside. “That’s Zachary’s coffin wheel.”
Darkwyn covered his eyes from the glare of the sun as he looked up. “Amazing.”
“The seats are eco-friendly coffins. And beside the wheel, those mythical carousel figures were carved by Rory MacKenzie, a world-class carver, from Salem and Scotland. His wife, Vickie Cartwright MacKenzie, is one of the most famous high priestesses in Salem and my best friend.”
Darkwyn took Bronte’s hand. “Let’s enjoy the sun, since we work at night.” On the carousel, he set her on a mermaid figure, taking the sea dragon beside her. “I recognize some of the figures, Asena, the blue-maned she-wolf carrying a cub in her mouth; Pegasus; a silver unicorn; faeries and dragons. Nice.”
“Zachary made the sofas from rocking coffins. My favorite figures are the white tiger, the seahorse, and the phoenix, because of our building—and now your tat. Actually, I love the whole mythical carousel. Our unique rides draw people from all over the world,” Bronte said. “Wholesome family fun. I didn’t take you into every nook at Fangs. It really is a scary, fun-house thrill for the unjaded.”
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