by Megan Derr
But over time, it grew worse and worse, until the only way to keep the afflicted alive was to feed them vampire blood.
Unfortunately, the craving for human blood never went away. It too grew worse and worse, as the body increasingly wanted something it could no longer have. It would not have been hard, the night Johnnie's parents died, for someone to kidnap Sariah and manipulate her into the feeding frenzy that killed his parents.
To judge by the surroundings, this dream was of a time when Sariah had still been alive—but later on, when Ontoniel would have been feeding her his blood almost exclusively. The wounds on his arms were too fresh for it to be otherwise. Johnnie could not fathom what a nightmare that must have been, and he winced, thinking of the argument he and Ontoniel had gotten into, not so long ago.
The door opened, then, and a servant slipped inside.
"I gave orders that I was not to be disturbed," Ontoniel said.
"Yes, my lord," the servant replied, "but I thought you would like to know that Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight are here, and have brought their son with them."
"The baby was born?" Ontoniel said.
"They would understand, my lord, if they had to come back—"
"No," Ontoniel said. "Of course I want to see them. Thank you. Bring them here at once."
As the servant left again, Ontoniel tossed back the last of his drink, then rolled down his sleeves and straightened his hair. Thought not quite as neat as usual, he looked much more like the Ontoniel that Johnnie better knew.
The door opened again, and Johnnie's eyes suddenly burned—somehow, it had not struck him what the servant had said. Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight.
His parents.
He knew them from pictures, from his few memories, but this was not the same. Not at all. He really did look exactly like his mother, but dark where she had obviously been fair. Johnnie did not realize how tightly he had been gripping Bergrin's hand until suddenly he was pulled back against Bergrin, an arm around him. Johnnie could not tear his eyes from his parents, the way his mother held him, little more than a pile of blankets in her arms.
"Thank you for seeing us, my lord," Tommy said.
"Not at all," Ontoniel replied. "I am happy to see you are settled, and that your son has made it into the world, alive and healthy. May I?"
Cordula beamed, and gently handed her son over. "Of course, my lord. After all that you have done to help us settle here, we thought you would like to see him."
"Yes," Ontoniel said, gently holding the baby, smiling ever so faintly. He moved across the room to the seating area, and sat down in one of the leather chairs, settling the baby more comfortably in his arms. After a few minutes, he looked toward Tommy and Cordula, seated on the couch now, holding hands and watching Ontoniel holding their son. "What did you name him?"
"Actually—" Cordula smiled shyly. "After all that you have done, all the trouble you have gone to for us—for him—we thought it would be fitting if you named him, my lord. I mean, if you would like."
Ontoniel looked at them in genuine surprise. "Me?"
Tommy nodded. "We would be honored, my lord."
"The honor is mine," Ontoniel replied softly, and looked down at the baby again. "I think something simple and innocuous for you, something to help you live the normal life your parents want so badly for you." He fell silent a moment, then said, "John, I think. That suits perfectly."
Cordula smiled. "John it is."
Johnnie did not know he was crying until he realized he could no longer see. Ontoniel had named him? Why had no one ever told him? He stared at the image, of Ontoniel holding him, talking to him, while his parents watched, until the image suddenly blurred and grayed—
"Wait here," Bergrin abruptly said, and let go of him, then surged to where the figure of Ontoniel was still just visible.
Everything shifted, changed—and Johnnie realized as the study started to fill in again that the whole thing was starting over.
Then Bergrin reached out, to where a lone Ontoniel was standing by a window that was still forming. Bergrin grasped his face, tilted it up, and his eyes seemed to shimmer as he simply said, "Wake."
As suddenly as that, Ontoniel was gone. Bergrin strode back to Johnnie. "I had to wait until the dream changed, or restarted, so that I did not interrupt it and cause some sort of harm. He should be awake now, and free of the curse, having broken it by waking up. It's time for us to go."
Johnnie frowned. "The spell on me is broken—does that mean I will now fall prey to the Sleeping Beauty curse?"
Bergrin shook his head. "I don't believe so. You're an incubus; that should make you immune to such spells."
He held out his hand, and Johnnie took it. "I hope this works."
Bergrin smiled in a way that made Johnnie shiver, and looking into those strange white eyes, he could see why people had preferred to believe that death as a corporeal being was a myth. "It will work. Nothing and no one hides from death forever."
Johnnie nodded, and held tightly as Bergrin took them out of dreams.
Case 010: Paragon of Beauty
Johnnie looked around the ballroom in surprise, disoriented for a moment, unused to the sharp clarity of the real world after the blurred unreality of the dream plane.
But then one of the bodies on the floor moved, and he raced over to Ontoniel, dropping to his knees. "Father! Are you all right?"
Ontoniel pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, eyes closed in a grimace. "I am fine. My head hurts something fierce. What happened, John?"
Johnnie's words caught in his throat briefly, as the new significance attached to that name washed over him, but now was not the time. "Ekaterina cursed all of you," he said, and helped Ontoniel stand as he began to explain everything.
"I see," Ontoniel said when he had finished. "What a mess. But I am pleased you found the papers, John. I knew you would, should you ever need to. I always meant to give you those rings, but I never got around to it." He shook his head. "A magic mirror, I cannot believe that idiot—" He broke off, and let out a sigh.
"How did she even know about it?" Johnnie wondered aloud, frowning. "I never even thought to ask that, until now."
Ontoniel frowned. "She was there, the first night I learned your father was doing things he should not. I had arranged for someone to check on them from time to time, to ensure that they were being permitted to settle into a normal life, that abnormal problems were not bleeding into it. I truly wanted their attempt at a new life to work, for them—for you, John." He sighed again. "But, that night, I had Ekaterina and her family over for dinner. They were only recently returned to the States, and I had not had anyone over since Sariah took a turn for the worse. She had been fairly calm that entire week, however, so I felt obliged to invite them to dinner to welcome them home."
Johnnie thought of the fresh wounds he had seen in the dream, Ontoniel weary and all but broken, sitting so alone at his desk.
"At some point late in the evening, one of the guards I had set to watch your parents came to me. We spoke at length in the hall, just outside the parlor where Elam was playing." He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It would not have been hard for her to eavesdrop if she so desired. Why she would have bothered, I do not know, but if she heard enough to intrigue her—"
"She could have kept tabs on Tommy's work herself," Johnnie finished. "For that matter, she could have discreetly encouraged him. I do not think we will ever know. When she decided to take the mirror from him, and they hid it from her, she lashed out with the one thing into which no one would ever look too closely."
"Yes," Ontoniel said. "Most would have hushed the matter up quickly and moved hastily on, eager to forget that a blood-crazed Dracula's wife murdered people. But I did look deeper, enough to know something was wrong. But I was blind to the fact that one of my own was behind it—and I nearly let her marry one of my sons."
He glanced over to where Elam lay on the ballroom floor, fast asleep, so still he might have b
een dead. "Thankfully, that did not come to pass. Why did she even drag Elam into this? Simply to get closer to the family, I suppose," Ontoniel mused.
Johnnie scowled. "She said she had wanted to cast the love spell on me—"
Ontoniel winced.
"You did see that a love spell was cast on me," Johnnie said. "Why would you do that?"
"To protect you," Ontoniel said. "It was meant to be much milder than it proved to be, and I regretted it the moment it was done. I did not want you running away, and I greatly feared you would, as unhappy as you were in those days." He smiled briefly, looking between Johnnie and Bergrin. "I have never been happier to see someone fall truly in love, believe me. I am glad the two of you seem to have reconciled."
Johnnie's face heated. "Why do you sound so smug and unsurprised that—"
"That my Enforcer is breaking rule number one and yet still employed?" Ontoniel said dryly, sliding Bergrin an amused look. "John, you have always been very good at seeing everything but your own reflection."
"What does that mean?" Johnnie snapped.
"It means any idiot watching the two of you could see that you were in love—but the two of you could not see it short of a shouting match at a betrothal ball."
Johnnie shot his father a disgusted look. "If you were anyone else, Father, I would tell you to shut up."
Ontoniel chuckled.
"Not that I'm not grateful still to be breathing," Bergrin said, "But we need to know where Cordula might have hidden that mirror."
"I am surprised the journals your father has do not say," Ontoniel said, frowning. "But maybe Cordula showed some sense in never telling him where it was—not that he could have gotten to it anyway. Who knows, those two never—" He cut himself off, and fumed in silence for a moment. "Your mother was smart, if soft. She would have put the mirror in a place only she knew about, some place that was special to her."
Johnnie thought for a moment, then said, "It would have to be a memory of something after she left the dream plane, since that is the only way I would ever have a chance of figuring it out. Some place, I suppose, that is special to her and my father."
"When they first met," Bergrin said. "That would be something only the two of them knew, something only she would think of."
"But my parents are dead," Johnnie said, "and those memories would have died with them. So it would have to be someplace still there, still sustained by other people."
"Where they met for the first time in the real world, then," Bergrin suggested. "A memory of that. Whatever the place, it would be common enough to still exist on the dream plane."
Johnnie frowned in thought.
"Applewood," Ontoniel said. "I remember them talking about it; they seemed almost ashamed, I remember thinking it must be a poorer district. That sort of thing always makes people uncomfortable around me."
"I remember that name," Johnnie said. "It was in the file. Before they moved here, they lived in Applewood Apartments."
"I know the place," Bergrin said. "That's an old complex, up on Lace Street. Applewood Manor used to be there, way way back in the day. But the owner went crazy, burned it to the ground. The lot was vacant for decades until the apartment complex went up. Bad side of town. They call that area the Woods, 'cause all the streets around there are named for trees—Apple, Plum, Oak, Elm, Peach, Birch, Maple. That place is rife with nasty types. Rumors are there's even a damned D-pit somewhere, though no one has ever been able to find it."
"No wonder Tommy and Cordula wanted out," Johnnie said.
"Then we had best go find the mirror," Bergrin said. "I would go myself, but I suspect your mother made certain that only you could actually retrieve it."
"All right," Johnnie said, but he was suddenly loathe simply to leave Ontoniel. He would not soon forget the way Ontoniel had just dropped when the curse was cast, or how miserable he had looked sitting at his desk in the dark, fresh wounds on his arms from where his wife had cannibalistically fed.
The way Ontoniel had smiled as he gave Johnnie a name.
Ontoniel lifted one brow. "Do not say you are worried about me, John. I assure you I will be quite all right by myself. Stop frowning so."
Johnnie wanted to snap that he knew that, that he was not worried, but all that came out when he opened his mouth was, "I did not know you named me."
Surprise filled Ontoniel's face, and then he smiled faintly. "Now how did you know that?"
"It—it was the dream we woke you from," Johnnie said, feeling guilty and awkward.
"I see," Ontoniel said softly. "It was a bright point, in the midst of Sariah's growing madness. I always hoped a normal name would help give you a normal life."
Johnnie did not know what to say to that, all the words clogged in his throat, but at last he managed, "I like the life it did give me, even if that life is not normal."
Ontoniel smiled, but said only, "Get going. The hours are ticking away."
"Yes, Father," Johnnie said, and took Bergrin's hand as he held it out, and then they vanished again.
*~*~*
"This switching between planes is disorienting," Johnnie said, closing his eyes for a moment to adjust to the disjointed, fuzzy feeling of the dream plane. "How do you just hop between them?"
Bergrin smiled. "I've been doing it since I was a kid. Until I was about ten or so, I was almost totally normal. But as I got older, my real powers began to manifest. Some of us could not afford fancy sorcerers to cast spells on us."
Johnnie rolled his eyes.
Snickering, Bergrin continued, "One day, I did it by accident. Had no idea I'd just leapt into the dream plane. I just knew something was wrong. So I did what any smart boy would do in my situation."
"Cried for help?" Johnnie guessed.
"Screamed like a girl for my mommy," Bergrin affirmed, grinning. "She found me pretty quickly, and after that, I started getting lessons. Followed by more lessons. And after that, more lessons. Then even more, until I wished I had no magic whatsoever."
"Obviously that stance changed," Johnnie said dryly. "Do I even want to know what changed your mind?"
Bergrin looked around briefly, then motioned, and they began to walk. Johnnie only passingly recognized the dream version of Brennus' territory. "His name was Harold; he was pretty, rich, and thought I was lower than dirt."
Johnnie glared. "So, what? You have made a lifelong habit out of stalking and molesting wealthy persons and nobility? Just how many—"
He tried to push Bergrin away, when Bergrin slid an arm around him, and not give in to the hard kiss, but he sensed it would be easier to give up breathing.
"I did not stalk and molest him," Bergrin said when they parted. "I stalked him and scared the living shit out of him for being a jerk to me. Then I vowed I would never again, under any circumstances, fall for another spoiled little rich brat."
Johnnie eyed him, only slightly mollified to hear he was not simply the last in a very long list. "What changed your mind?"
Bergrin smirked. "Getting called into work on my day off."
Losing all patience, Johnnie swung out with his cane and hit Bergrin. Hard.
"Stop abusing me," Bergrin said, rubbing his arm where Johnnie had struck it.
Johnnie only scowled.
"Like I said, I was off duty. But I got a call from my boss. All the usual bodyguards for Johnnie Desrosiers, he said, were occupied. A simple job, I was told. The kid was going to a party—"
"The kid?" Johnnie said.
Bergrin grinned. "The kid was going to a party at Adelardi's casino. Go and keep an eye on him, job should be cake. I was offered double pay for it, since it was my first day off in a long time, so I went."
"You only met me because you were going to get paid double time?" Johnnie asked, insulted. Then he frowned thoughtfully. "I did not even realize you were at that party. So the one and only other time you have been in the Last Star, was to babysit me?"
"Yes," Bergrin said, peering at him, expression pensive and a bit hu
rt. "So you don't remember me at all? You looked straight at me."
"I did?" Johnnie asked, confused. "Rostiya called me to that party to help him locate a Cinderella before something bad happened. I did not pay attention to anyone who was not a likely Cinderella. Where did I see you?"
Bergrin shook his head, laughing softly. "Did you know that before that night, I had never seen you? I saved your brother the one time, but some way, somehow, I had never encountered the infamous Johnnie Desrosiers. I was sent your picture, that night, and thought you looked like a typical rich brat. Then you walked in …" he drifted off.
Johnnie frowned.