by Lynsay Sands
Realizing he was waiting for an answer, Elvi shook her head. “I didn’t have a sire.”
Victor stared at her nonplussed. “You had to have a sire…unless…” He paused, then asked doubtfully, “You weren’t born an immortal?”
Elvi laughed at the idea. “No, of course not. Five years ago I had gray hair and wrinkles,” she assured him. “But no one sired me.”
“Someone had to,” he insisted.
Elvi peered past him at the lightening sky, her mind automatically going back to the period around her own death. It was a time she didn’t like to think about, and in truth was a terrible blur. All she remembered clearly was that she’d bitten Mabel and nearly killed her while out of her head.
“Mabel and I went to Mexico,” she said finally. “We were in a car accident and I woke up several days later like this.” Elvi forced a smile, shifting uncomfortably when he stared at her with incomprehension. “I guess you could say I’m an accidental vampire.”
Forcing a smile, she murmured good night and pulled the door closed before he could say anything more. Elvi didn’t like to think about that time in her life and liked even less to talk about it.
Slipping the lock closed, she turned and entered her bedroom, grimacing at the sight of the coffin waiting there. She had a bit of a headache, and her tummy was uncomfortably full, but she was relaxed for the first time in years, thanks to the wine, and she was feeling a little less like a freak with so many of her kind around, yet had to sleep in that blasted thing.
Muttering under her breath, Elvi ignored the dark wooden casket and moved into the bathroom. She wanted a bath before bed, but it was late enough that she’d have to make do with a quick wash. Afraid of collapsing into the semi death that daylight was supposed to bring vampires, Elvi had never risked being out of her coffin after dawn. She wasn’t taking the chance to-night either. But tomorrow she would ask Victor what else she could and couldn’t do.
Frowning as she rinsed the soap from her face, Elvi realized it hadn’t even occurred to her that she could ask her questions of any of the men in her home, that all of them would know the answers. She simply automatically thought to ask Victor. She wasn’t sure if that was representative of a comfort level with him she hadn’t reached with the others yet, or a simple preference in dealing with him, but suspected it was both. That knowledge was enough to make her suddenly reluctant to ask her questions of him, but it was becoming woefully obvious that despite being a vampire for five years, she was terribly ignorant of what she could and couldn’t do. Who knew there were laws and so on? No, she had to ask her questions, and if she was going to ask anyone, it would be Victor.
She’d ask him about coffins first and then move on to things like the ability to slip into others’ minds. The conversation she’d overheard between Alessandro and Harper had her curious. Could she read minds and control others as Alessandro had suggested Edward may have done with Mabel?
Mabel had insisted Elvi try to read minds and so on when she’d first changed. After all, Dracula could apparently do it, but Elvi hadn’t been able to manage the task and had decided that only he, as the king of vampires, could do it. But if Edward could do it too, maybe she just hadn’t tried long enough.
Mabel had also wanted to go to Transylvania and find Dracula, though she’d been sure the name would be different. Mabel had really been into the vampire thing, but then she wasn’t the one who’d been turned. She’d wanted to be, at first asking Elvi to turn her as well so they could both be vampires. However, no matter how many times Elvi had bitten her, or how much blood she took, the other woman hadn’t turned. Elvi had finally insisted they stop trying when she’d nearly killed her by taking too much blood.
She was glad she’d given it up when two years ago, Mabel had confessed she was really rather glad it hadn’t worked. After seeing all that Elvi had lost—food, wine, enjoying the garden in daylight, trips to the beach, barbecues with friends, and so on, she thought perhaps it wasn’t such a great deal.
Aside from all those things, Elvi had found herself faced with a myriad of legal problems as well since the change. ID for instance. Passports, driver’s licenses, and health cards had to be renewed every so often. All of them had expired within two years of her change. As for replacing them? Forget about it.
According to all her ID she was sixty-two. She didn’t look sixty-two. It would have been a problem. Fortunately, she no longer needed a health card, but traveling was out of the question without a passport.
Her driver’s license had also lapsed, but Elvi hadn’t bothered to renew it even though she could have done so here in town where they knew her and wouldn’t question her being sixty-two but looking twenty-five. Renewing it hadn’t seemed worth the trouble, however. She could pretty much walk everywhere in Port Henry, but if she needed the car to collect groceries or something, Teddy and Barney wouldn’t have given her a hard time. Other than that, she simply didn’t drive. The risk was too great should she be pulled over by an out-of-town officer. There was no way she could pass for the sixty-two on her driver’s license.
In effect, she was pretty much trapped here in Port Henry. But now that Victor and the others were here she wondered how they dealt with such issues. She had no idea how old they were, but each of them spoke with a certain formality that suggested they were older even than herself.
Except for DJ, she thought, and smiled to herself as she recalled the way he’d been flirting with Mabel all evening. Elvi’s friend had obviously found it all rather upsetting and put on her short-tempered, irritated old lady act, but Elvi knew under all the embarrassment the woman was flattered. Mabel was showing her age, but still attractive, and she wondered if DJ might really like her.
Spotting the pink tinge to the sky outside the bathroom window, Elvi rushed through the last of her ablutions. She then scampered into her room and climbed into her coffin with a grimace, wondering when Victor and the others had moved their caskets in. They’d all arrived in cars so must have had them shipped down, she reasoned, as she pulled the lid of her own casket shut.
Nine
“An accidental vampire,” Victor muttered to himself as he entered the room he shared with DJ.
“Victor?” The sleepy question came from the far side of the dark room as he closed the door. It was followed by rustling as DJ stirred on the pullout couch. “Did you say something?”
“Yes.” Victor snapped on the bedroom light.
DJ sat up, the sheets slipping down to his waist. “I’m up. What’s wrong?”
Victor strode across the room, glowering. “Elvi says she’s an accidental vampire.”
“What?” he asked with confusion.
Victor nodded. “She hasn’t learnt any of our laws or rules from her sire because she doesn’t think she has one.”
“Well, of course she does,” DJ said reasonably. “Someone has to have turned her.”
“That’s what I said,” he admitted. “But she says she went to Mexico with Mabel, was in a car accident, and woke up a vampire. She’s an accidental vampire.”
“That’s not possible,” DJ pointed out. “Maybe the accident is all she remembers. Maybe her sire wiped her memory or something.”
“Or she,” Victor said, and pointed out, “It doesn’t have to have been a man.”
“Or,” DJ said, eyes wide. “Maybe she was injured in the accident and was given contaminated blood by the blood bank.”
“No vampire would give blood to a blood bank,” Victor said dryly.
“I guess not,” he agreed with disappointment, then stiffened and said, “unless they were rogue and looking to contaminate a lot of mortals without exposing themselves to discovery.”
Victor gaped at him with disbelief. “You have to stop watching those late-night James Bond marathons.”
“Well, it’s possible,” DJ argued. “It’s actually a brilliant plan.”
Victor snatched up a pillow from the bed and slammed it into the side of his head. “No it’s
not brilliant. And it’s not what happened here.”
“How do you know?” DJ challenged.
“Because, I’m sure even in Mexico they test donated blood before giving it to accident victims. They’d have spotted the nanos right away and pulled the blood to examine further and we’d be exposed by now.”
“The immortal could have controlled the minds of the people who tested it so that they didn’t test it at all,” DJ suggested.
Victor rolled his eyes. “Then there’d be a hell of a lot of confused new immortals running around Mexico and we’d have heard about it long before now. Elvi was turned five years ago.”
“Oh.” The idiot looked disappointed at this news. Apparently, he’d been rather excited at the idea of a Gold-finger-type immortal, plotting to take over the world or some such thing by spreading his blood around.
Shaking his head, Victor walked over to the king-sized bed and dropped, sitting on the side to remove his shoes.
“So…” DJ said.
When he paused, Victor raised his head to peer at him curiously. “What?”
“Mabel’s hot, huh?”
Victor blinked at the change in subject, but acknowledged, “She’s an attractive woman.” A smile tugged at his lips as he recalled the way DJ had been hanging over her all night. He bent to remove his second shoe.
“I can’t read her,” DJ blurted.
Victor froze, and then slowly raised his head to stare at the man. He raised one eyebrow in question. “You can’t?”
DJ shook his head slowly from side to side. “I tried both at the restaurant and then again when we got back to the house. I can’t read her.”
Victor let his breath out slowly as he was assaulted by sundry thoughts. The main one was that DJ had met his lifemate.
“That could be a complication,” he commented finally.
“Yeah,” DJ agreed, then stifled his grin and said solemnly, “I’ll try not to let it interfere.”
“Right,” Victor murmured, but knew that would be impossible. He’d had a lifemate once. He knew the effect she had. The man would be scattered and useless, unable to tear his thoughts from the woman who held his future in her hands like a wee baby bird that could be nurtured to adulthood, or crushed with the barest squeeze.
Sighing, he pushed aside the envy suddenly gnawing at his insides and kicked off his second shoe, then stood and crossed the room to flip off the switch.
“Good night, Victor,” DJ said as the darkness dropped over the room again.
“Good night,” he said quietly, suddenly terribly, terribly tired.
Elvi woke up late. She suspected it was a result of the alcohol t he night before and grimaced over the cotton mouth she was suffering as she stumbled into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She followed that up with a quick shower, then threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the door, eager to feed.
Both kinds.
She’d have to have blood of course, but would follow that up with real food. Maybe that cheesecake she’d never got to last night. Or ice cream.
Or bacon, Elvi thought as she stepped out of her room and sniffed. Yes, that was definitely bacon she smelled. Cheesecake suddenly went to the bottom of the list of most-desirable foods. It was too sweet for breakfast, despite the fact that it was actually seven o’clock at night.
The delicious scents teasing her nose didn’t prepare her for the sight that met her as she entered the kitchen.
Victor stood in front of a pan of spitting, hissing bacon. Harper was at his side, manning the toaster. Alessandro was just closing the coffeepot and turning it on and Edward was squeezing fresh orange juice.
“Good morning,” she said brightly, grinning at the sight of so many men working so industriously in her kitchen. Pedro cooked at the restaurant, but Elvi’s marriage had been an old-fashioned one with her husband working out of the house and never stepping into her kitchen. This was…extraordinary.
All four men turned to look her way as one. They also smiled and greeted her in quadraphonic stereo. “Good morning.”
Elvi’s grin widened for some reason when she saw that Victor was wearing Mabel’s apron. She moved forward, asking, “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing. It’s all done,” Victor announced. He turned off the burner under the bacon, then grabbed a potholder and opened the oven door to reveal two bowls inside. One held scrambled eggs, the other was full of golden hash browns. Glancing her way, he added, “Sit down.”
Elvi hesitated, then defied the order and slid into the kitchen, weaving her way through the men to get to the fridge.
“What are you looking for? I can get it for you.” Alessandro moved quickly forward, but Elvi had already opened the door and grabbed a bag of blood. She usually kept some in the refrigerator in her room, but hadn’t thought to take any up last night.
“Oh.” Alessandro stepped out of the way as she closed the door. It just put him in front of the shelf of cups, though.
“I need a mug,” she said apologetically, lisping slightly around her fangs as just the sight of the bag of blood combined with her hunger to draw them out.
Rather than step out of her way, Alessandro reached up to the open shelf to grab a cup for her.
Before she could take it, though, Victor said, “It takes too long to drink that way. Your breakfast will get cold. Alessandro, show her how to feed from the bag.”
“From the bag?” Elvi asked uncertainly, glancing over to see that Victor had placed the eggs and hash browns on the table and was now transferring the bacon from the frying pan to a plate.
“Don’t you know how to feed from the bag?” Harper asked with surprise as he carried the toast to the table.
“She never met her sire and wasn’t trained…in anything,” Victor answered for her, and Elvi felt herself flush when the men all turned to stare at her with combined horror and pity. She felt as embarrassed as if he’d just announced that her skirt was caught in the back of her panties.
“You said that last night, but I never imagined it included not teaching her how to feed herself,” Edward commented and moved to take the bag from her before Alessandro did, and instructed, “Open your mouth.”
Elvi caught the irritation that flashed across the men’s faces at Edward’s usurping the chore as she opened her mouth, then gave a start when the bag was popped onto her fangs with a quick sharp move.
Elvi instinctively tried to ask what he was doing, but of course she couldn’t talk around the bag in her mouth and gave up the effort when Edward caught her hand and said firmly, “No speaking. This will only take a moment.”
Elvi stood still as she waited for the bag to empty, surprised to find the man hadn’t been kidding. He was soon tugging the emptied bag from her teeth.
“That’s incredible,” she said with amazement as he moved to discard the bag.
“Much faster than drinking from the glass, no?” Alessandro took her elbow and steered her around the counter to the table.
“Much,” Elvi agreed with a smile, and then turned her attention to the breakfast laid out in front of her as she took her seat. Her eyes widened incredulously at the amount of food on the table. They must have used all three packages of bacon she’d bought. Harper had apparently toasted a whole loaf of bread, and she suspected Victor had put both cartons of eggs and one of the frozen rolls of sausage in the scrambled eggs. It seemed the men had found their appetites.
“Here.” Victor began to scoop scrambled eggs on her plate and Elvi’s eyes widened with amused horror at the small mountain he served her. Harper immediately began to dump bacon on top of the eggs.
“Toast?” Alessandro asked, holding the plate out for her as Edward poured fresh-squeezed orange juice into her glass.
Wow! If this was what being courted was like, she could learn to like it, Elvi thought and murmured “thank you” to all of them as she took a piece of toast. She was not going to eat all this, but would have fun trying.
“I take it you gu
ys are eating again?” she commented with amusement as the men claimed their seats around the table and began to fill their own plates. “Over your boredom with food, are you?”
The sudden silence at the table made her glance up curiously from scooping eggs onto her fork. The men were all still and staring at each other.
“What?” she asked curiously. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” they answered in stereo. Then Victor and Harper turned their attention to their plates, their expressions troubled. Alessandro had a curious expression on his face as he glanced from man to man, and Edward was eyeing everyone with calculation. It was all very odd and Elvi hadn’t a clue what these reactions were all about.
They ate in silence for a bit, and then she decided to make another gambit at conversation. She glanced at Alessandro and said curiously, “You said last night that you hadn’t eaten in fifty years?”
“Si,” he nodded.
“DJ is the only one young enough to still eat…prior to this,” Victor added uncomfortably, and then forged on with, “I fear the rest of us are too old to be bothered with food most of the time.”
“Too old to be bothered with it?” Elvi echoed, glancing around at their faces.
“After a century or two most immortals grow bored with the trouble of eating and refrain from bothering unless it is a social occasion,” Harper explained.
“A century or two?” Elvi gasped but had some vague recollection of having heard this before. Probably the night before, either on the way to or during shopping. Anything told to her then had gone out the window. Her mind had been wholly on food at that point. She glanced from man to man. “How old are you?”
The others all looked to Victor in question. When he shrugged, Edward cleared his throat, drawing her gaze. “I was born in 1004.”
While Elvi was sucking in her breath over this, Harper leaned forward and offered, “I was born in 1282.”
“Me, I was born in 1794,” Alessandro announced. When she glanced his way, he grinned and added, “I am the youngest.”