Sometimes they featured whole families, a man, woman, child, and a family pet, like an aristocratic looking wolfhound. Others featured just a child with a solitary adult, occasionally a regal-looking young gentleman but more often, just a beautiful, poised lady.
But they all had one thing in common. A young girl, posed front and center. In most pictures, she appeared to be about eight or nine, though some stylistic choices had her appearing younger, while other had her appearing older.
Because the pictures had been painted by different people, it wasn’t immediately obvious that it was the same girl. Her wavy brown hair was worn a hundred different ways; her cheeks went from painted full and rosy in some to pale and taut in another.
The one true constant was her eyes. Somehow, every artist managed to capture them perfectly. The brilliance and beauty of the blue contrasting with a taciturn, otherworldliness to them. She may have looked like a child, but her eyes were ancient.
As we reached the top of the stairs, I finally spotted the painting with the most familiar face. Both the young girl and her “mother” were adorned in opulence – their dark dresses were decorated to the max, with ribbons, grommets, and ridiculously wide collars, perfectly matched with the wide hips of their gowns.
The girl had a smug, half-smile on her face, reminiscent of the Mona Lisa. The woman behind her had her hand on her shoulder, her fingers bedazzled with jewels of all kinds, and she already had the beginnings of the hazy grin she would eventually be renowned for.
The woman was Olivia, and the girl in every painting was her maker, the child vampire Rebekah.
“This is Rebekah’s house,” I realized.
“Rebekah?” Bobby echoed, scrunching his face in confusion, but then I saw the realization hit him – his eyes widening and his steps slowed. “Oh hell.”
BOBBY AND I HAD ONLY met Rebekah once, back before I was a vampire hunter and was still in training with Olivia. It had been when Mae had turned her great-granddaughter Daisy in a futile attempt to save her from a terminal illness, but then Mae had learned the hard way that no good every came from a child becoming an immortal monster.
But before that, before Mae collided with the terrible reality and had to snap Daisy’s neck so hard that it decapitated her, we’d been trying to find a way to make it work. So, Olivia had introduced us to Rebekah, who had agreed to help Daisy cope with the unimaginable nightmare of being a little girl with an insatiable bloodlust and eternal agonizing hunger pains.
As tragic as everything had turned out, I had to admit that I honestly felt a great deal of relief when Daisy died. After meeting Rebekah, I had less hope than before. There was this cold, eeriness to her, like a demon-possessed porcelain doll.
And now I was sleeping in a spare bedroom of Rebekah’s gothic castle. Heavy drapes hung over all the windows, blocking out in the faintest hint of light. The four-post bed sat in the center of the spacious room, draped with wonderfully thick blankets that were surprisingly comfortable, especially given the fact that they had a distinctly musty scent to them.
I had woken up, but I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet to get my phone, which sat charging on the far side of the room. The thing about old manors like this is that they weren’t exactly built with outlets and electronic devices in mind.
So, when the door slowly creaked open, I had no idea what time it was, and since I didn’t feel entirely safe in Rebekah’s home, I tensed up. But it only took a second for me to tune into the familiar rhythm of Bobby’s heartbeat.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as he crept inside my room.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.” He closed the door behind him. “Is there a light switch in here? I can’t find lights anywhere in this damned place.”
“It’s probably all lit with candles or kerosene or something ridiculous that,” I muttered.
My vampire eyesight was far superior to Bobby’s, and I watched him as he felt around clumsily in the dark. He was barefoot, wearing the pair of jeans we’d arrived in yesterday paired with a V-neck tee shirt that showed off the tattoos scrawled across this chest.
“Marco,” I said, in attempt to guide him by the sound of my voice.
“I’m supposed to say ‘Marco.’ You say ‘Polo.’”
“Whatever. Polo. You’re just about at the bed.”
He finally reached the bed and climbed into the bed beside me, hurriedly crawling under the covers, reminding me of a little kid rushing to hide from monsters.
“It’s frickin freezing.” He shivered. “Like I get used to you and Milo always liking it cold, but this is ridiculous.”
Vampires didn’t feel cold, not the way humans did, and in fact, we tended to prefer it. But it was cold enough in this place that I half-expected to see my breath fog up the air.
“Did you sleep?” I asked him.
“Some,” he replied noncommittally, then he lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Do you think this is a trap?”
“Olivia likes me. Why would she want to set me up?” I asked, but I couldn’t shake the sense of dread that clung to me ever since I first spied the manor above the hill.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Things just don’t feel right to me.”
“Well, good thing you came with then,” I said. “You can watch my back.”
Even though he was buried under the covers in a darkened room, I swear I saw him puff up with pride.
There was one quick rap at the door before it opened, without waiting for a response. The woman who had let us into the house initially had eventually introduced herself by the mononym Myska before showing us to our rooms. Myska came into my room now and pushed an odd-looking knob near the door, which caused the chandelier above to flick on, bathing the room in dull yellow light.
“Oh, ty vole!” She put a hand to her chest, looking surprised at the sight of Bobby huddled in bed beside me, probably because she remembered giving him his own (much smaller) room at the far end of the hall this morning.
“Good evening,” Bobby said, doing his best to sound cheery, as he squinted at her, since his eyes took longer to adjust the light than mine did.
“Good.” She did a low bow again. “You are both here. Dinner is served in ten minutes.”
“Dinner?”
“Ano. The chef has obtained local feast for you,” she said in her broken English. Then her eyes darted from her me to Bobby, my human comrade. “Unless you want to, jak to říct, dine with your…” She motioned to him. “Food.”
“What? Oh, no.” I shook my head adamantly. “He’s not… he’s not for eating.”
“I am a friend, not food,” he reiterated.
“Ano, of course.” Myska lowered her head, her cheeks flushing subtly with shame.
Once she’d given us unsteady directions to the dining hall, I got out of bed and dressed in a hurry. It sounded like it would take us almost ten minutes to get there, and I didn’t want to keep them waiting.
“So I should come with?” Bobby asked as I pulled a gray tunic over my faux-leather leggings.
“Well, the alternative is you staying behind in these musty, empty rooms by yourself, and honestly that sounds worse to me.” I draped a long chain necklace over my head and ran my fingers through my tangles of dark hair. “Do you think I look nice enough for this?”
“Do I?” He shrugged and motioned to himself. “How do you dress for dinner with a vampire?”
Thankfully, we’d left in a hurry, because it took us at least ten minutes to find the dining hall, in part due to the maid’s less than impeccable grasp of the English language but also largely due to the massive size of the place.
When we reached the dining hall, pushing open two enormous wooden doors, I found three vampires seated around a baroque-styled room on a series of crimson velvet chaise lounges. I had naïvely excepted the dining hall to have a dining table, but considering vampires didn’t use tables for eating, this made much more sense.
“Alice!” Olivia shouted in delight wh
en I came in, as if she hadn’t just seen me on Saturday. She was sprawled back on her sofa, which was her usual state of being, and she wore a gown of sheer black fabric, with her dark hair cascading around her.
On the chaise closest to here, beneath an enormous ornate mirror, sat Rebekah, looking exactly as she had the last time I saw her. She was like a strange facsimile of a child, with all the presence of a life size doll.
Her smooth skin, full cheeks, and her perfectly styled brown waves were all spot-on reproductions of an adorable little girl, but there was no life to her. The lavish gown she wore, replete with exquisite jewelry only added to her figurine-like appearance.
Rebekah was over a thousand years old, making her the oldest vampire I had ever met, and from what I gathered, she had lost her connection to true humanity a long time ago. She sat perfectly poised at the edge of sofa, unmoving, unflinching.
When she turned her head subtly to look at me, it was like watching a mannequin come to life. The illusion was so convincing that I heard Bobby’s sharp intake of breath when she blinked at him – her lids moving slowly, almost robotically, over her startling blue eyes.
“It has been some time since I’ve last seen you, Alice,” Rebekah said, her voice smooth and emotionless. “You are looking well.”
Sitting on the chaise closest to Rebekah was a young vampire, appearing to be in her mid-twenties, though I couldn’t guess how long she’d really been alive. She dressed similarly to Rebekah, so much so that they almost looked like matching mother-daughter outfits designed for a period piece.
She stood when Bobby and I entered the room, smiling in a way that reminded me of an overly excitable cocker spaniel, and she fidgeted with her elbow-length satin gloves as Rebekah and I spoke.
“Thank you,” I replied to Rebekah’s compliment, though I wasn’t sure if she meant it or not. “You too.” Then, since it felt overly silent and sufficiently awkward, I motioned to Bobby standing beside me. “You remember Bobby?”
“I do not. But I usually don’t make a point of remembering humans.” Rebekah smiled then, but it was totally devoid of any sense of happiness. “You won’t either, if you ever get to live to be my age.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, since I didn’t know how else to respond.
Still toying with her gloves, the other vampire made a bold move and stepped toward us with her hand extended, like she meant to shake mine, and announced, “I am Anka Novak. I am Rebekah’s adoptive mother.”
“Anka!” Rebekah snapped just before she reached us. Anka dropped her hand immediately and lowered her gaze. “Not now. You can prattle on later.” With her head still bowed, Anka retreated to her sofa.
Since Rebekah had the appearance of a child, she required vampires to act as parents for her, handling all the legalities that a child would be unable to do on their own and travel with her, as not to raise suspicion.
That’s why she’d turned Olivia, and as Olivia had once explained, she had been more of a slave to her child master than a true mother-daughter relationship. I imagined that it wasn’t much different for this Anka woman either.
“Now, we eat,” Rebekah commanded.
Rebekah rang a bell, and seconds later, a tall man with a thick moustache entered the room, with a parade of four young ladies following behind him. None of them could be more than twenty-years-old, if that, but they were all well-dressed and healthy looking, with strong hearts pounding wildly in their chests.
“Olivia prefers young women, so that’s what I put on the menu for tonight,” Rebekah explained, sounding disinterested. “Guests may choose first.”
“My favorite.” Olivia was off the chaise in a flash, looking over the beautiful girls as they smiled demurely and let out a few flirtatious laughs.
She finally decided on a chubby blond one, directing her over to her couch. Then, assuming correctly that I would never pick one for myself, she took a tall brunette by the hand and led her over to me.
“Olivia, I don’t –”
“Alice.” Olivia’s tone was friendly but her eyes were severe. “It’s rude to turn down hospitality, and these girls know what they’re doing. This is their job. So, eat. Please.”
I could feel Rebekah’s unmoving gaze and decided she was not a host that I would want to piss off. I took the girl’s hand from Olivia, and she sat down on the couch beside me, putting herself between Bobby and me.
He scooted down some, and once everyone had chosen a “meal,” Myska wheeled in a small gold cart with a heaping plate of mashed potatoes and a green bottle of Lobkowitz beer.
“We don’t have many human guests,” Rebekah said, with venom dripping on the word guests.
“This is, uh, this is perfect.” Bobby smiled as he held up the beer. “Cheers.”
“We shall dine now,” Rebekah commanded, and immediately, everyone dove onto their meals, sinking their teeth into them.
Within seconds, the room was filled with the delicious scent of blood. I’d just eaten on Saturday, where I’d glutted myself on blood at the wedding, so I shouldn’t have been that hungry.
But the scent of it did something to me. Causing a powerful hunger and longing to grow inside me, coming not from my stomach but the core of my very being, vibrating through my bones and muscles.
The girl looked at me, her dark eyes wide and hopeful, and the tentative smile on her lips looked almost as hungry as I felt. “My name is Tereza,” she said, her words heavily accented. “I am ready for you to bite.”
Tereza pulled her long dark hair to the side and tilted her head, exposing her neck. And then she closed her eyes, biting her lip seductively, as she waited. Since there was no point in delaying, I pulled her into my lap and sunk my teeth into her throat.
She tasted of hope and youth and ambition, and she moaned with pleasure as I felt her delicious blood course through me, filling me with the most wonderful ecstatic heat.
OLIVIA SPED THROUGH THE CROWDED streets of Prague in Rebekah’s Rolls Royce, absently singing along to Rolling Stone’s “Paint It Black” that blasted out of the stereo. She took a sharp turn, nearly hitting a pedestrian, but she paid no mind.
“Hey, maybe try not to kill any humans while we’re out and about,” Bobby suggested from the backseat, as he once again went flying across the black leather seats as Oliva raced through the city.
“Put on your seatbelt,” I told him, but without my usual force.
The blood from dinner had left me feeling a bit foggy. I so rarely drank fresh blood, preferring to drink from bags that didn’t risk humans lives or nurture their dependency and eventual addiction to vampire bites. But it was impossible to deny the intense pleasure and residual high that came from drinking it fresh.
“Oh, I’ve never killed a human,” Olivia replied flippantly, and when she caught me looking over at her. “On accident, I mean. I’ve only ever killed them on purpose, and I don’t have plans to kill any tonight.”
Bobby leaned forward between the seats. “You know, Olivia, you seem like a really cool girl.”
She laughed. “Why, thank you. You seem swell for a human, and a man.” She thought for a second. “I honestly haven’t met that many human men I’ve liked at all. You might be the only one.”
“I take that as a high praise then,” he said as Olivia continued her drive down the street alongside the Vltava river that ran through the heart of the city. “But what I meant is… well, Rebekah seems not cool at all. She actually seems kind of horrible and mean.”
“She is both of those things,” Olivia agreed without a hint of irony.
“Then why do you hang out with her? Why visit her at all?”
“Rebekah is my maker,” she replied simply. “And the relationship between a vampire and their maker is a very complicated thing indeed.”
Bobby seemed like he wanted to say more about it, but Olivia turned sharply, sending him once again flying across the seat, and the words died on his lips.
“Bobby! Put on your damn seat
belt!” I snapped, with more conviction this time.
“Oh, there’s no need. We are almost…” She let the words trail off, then quickly jerked the wheel to the side, somehow parallel parking the Rolls Royce in a narrow spot on the street. “There.”
She’d parked right in front of a building that looked more like an old pub from a medieval fantasy than a modern vampire club. The iron sign above the door proclaimed the name, Klub Nemrtvý. Two vampire bouncers stood on either of the open doors, made of wrought iron and stained glass, shooing away drunken riffraff.
What I’d learned from Olivia’s club back in Minneapolis was that bouncers worked to keep out undesirable humans and rowdy vampires. Not every human that entered the club tonight would be bitten, but everyone had to be of a high enough caliber for the vampire clientele that it was an option.
“This place is a lot less subtle than your club,” Bobby commented as we all got out of the car.
“This is Europe. Everything is a lot less subtle here,” Olivia replied.
A cool summer breeze wafted off the nearby river, and I pulled on my oxblood leather jacket as we walked toward the door. Not because I was cold, but because I hoped to look cool enough to be let into a place like this.
When the bouncers saw Olivia, they just waved us on, though I noticed one of them give Bobby a once over. I grabbed his hand, since I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of establishment this was yet, and I didn’t want anyone coming up to snatch him. I needed to lay claim that he was my human and not for general consumption.
Inside, there were exposed brick walls and lots of architecture that lent itself to the historic neighborhood. The bar at the side of the club was ultramodern and slick, and the flashing colored lights – along with the thumping beats from the dubstep the DJ was playing – gave it a much more discotheque feel.
“Are you sure she’s here?” I asked Olivia as we pushed our way through the crowded dance floor.
“No, of course I’m not sure,” she said. “This is just where I saw her last night.”
Swear (My Blood Approves #5) Page 8