by Connie Vines
The flames flickered from blue to white, and then slowly faded away. As if emerging from the brick and mortar of the alcove, a scene unfolded. An unknown rural village. The churning gray sky filled with clouds hovered all around a distant bright blue castle, defiant in attitude.
From inside the giant panorama a conversation evolved: of women, witches, and a brotherhood of blood.
“I am the seventh son of the seventh son,” Viktor said, his words becoming one with sound of the winds and trespassing down the silent road. The villagers joined in the chant. The chant became louder and louder, almost drowning out Viktor’s next words. “The line, unbroken by the birth of a female, carries the curse.”
“Blestem.”
“Strigoi veșnică.”
“Vampir.”
“Cursed for all of eternity. Vampire.” The villagers fell silent with a wave of Viktor’s open hand. The images slowly melted away, replaced by the dimly lit recesses of a castle turret.
A tall man, dressed in a white cape came from the shadows. “Pleca. Uita acest loc,” he said.
Meredith noticed his red-hair fell past his shoulders and there was some sort of magical tool around his waist. “Who is this man?” she whispered.
“My father.”
As she watched, the man raised his arms and a swirling mist filled the room.
“The villagers cursed you?”
“No,” Viktor told her. “The villagers knew that I was cursed. I was becoming a Vampir and the people were afraid. Tatῠ is helping me to escape. To save me. . . “
Meredith tried to gather her thoughts. Which was going to be a struggle! Her husband was. . . is a Vampire. He drinks blood. Fresh, as in still percolating blood! “Did you. . .did he?”
“No. I harmed no one.” Viktor clarified. “I was young and only beginning to show the signs. My father knew I must escape. Before the curse claimed me entirely.”
Vampir, what exactly did that mean? Did Viktor come from a long-line of vampires? Was that a question she should even ask? Was Viktor’s curse contagious? After all she had enough to deal with without adding an ancient Romanian curse into the mix.
Curses.
Vampires.
What next?
It wasn’t like being a zombie wasn’t difficult enough!
“My father was cursed but he isn’t a Vampir,” Viktor told her, caressing her fear away. “Vampirism isn’t heredity, or a contagion. So there is no need to concern yourself. Feeding is only required during a full moon—”
Feeding? Meredith knew her eyes were protruding. She whipped her head around to look up at his face. “How can you answer a question I haven’t yet spoken?” She asked, with the tiniest hint of hysteria clinging to her question.
Viktor stopped mid-word. “Was I? I hadn’t realized. . .I didn’t believe it was possible.”
“What was possible?”
“That I could read your mind.”
Meredith closed her eyes. There was no need to ramble on and on about the nightmare of being dead. She had a husband who brought new meaning to the words: invade my personal space. “Really Viktor? You climbed inside my head?”
“Not consciously!”
“Did you do this before?”
“Before?”
“When I was alive? Not a zombie?”
“No. Mind reading is not a skill I normally possess. If I had, do you think we’d be divorcing?”
Point well taken. Viktor was silent and pale, and very still. (Which was really, really creepy.) But Meredith knew he wasn’t lying.
However, he did have a point. “Viktor I know it wasn’t intentional—”
“And I will be certain it does not happen again.”
***
But she was no longer listening to what Viktor was saying. Meredith tilted her head and listened. Silence. She heard the crackle of the fire and Gertie shuffling the on the floor of her cage. But there was no humming. The sound inside of her head was absent.
Viktor’s face mirrored his concern. “Meredith what is wrong?”
“Viktor the humming is gone,” amazement coloring her words. “It’s really gone.”
Stroking the golden strands of her silky hair, Viktor kissed the perfect shell of her ear. “Of course the annoying sound is gone, beloved.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t until—”
“You read my mind—” she guessed.
“Stumbled into your mind,” he corrected.
Meredith offered him a small sigh. “It must have been a very insightful.”
Viktor pondered her statement. “There weren’t any gears, levers, or Steampunk contraptions if that is what you are concerned about.”
Meredith’s lips twitched. “Husband, I do believe you are developing a sense of humor.”
“And?”
“I find it quite attractive.”
Viktor nodded, a smug look on his face. “Good. I told you I could change.”
Meredith’s gaze locked with his. “Yes you did. Now if I can only—”
Viktor rested a fingertip on her lips. “You have changed. We know how painful our lives were when we were apart.”
Meredith nodded.
“We have Pippa to thank for our second chance,” he reminded her.
“But Pippa shouldn’t have—” Meredith started to say.
Viktor interrupted her. “Perhaps not. But you know, she always believed in us, even when we didn’t. I think we owe her a little something for that.”
Although resistance and stubbornness and reason did not seem to flow out of her at once, Meredith whispered, “I guess maybe we do.”
“And then there is your cyber-friend.”
Meredith’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know?”
“Times may have gone high-tech, but supernatural beings have always been mentored by someone wiser, more experienced.”
Dawning horror descended upon her. “Viktor. You are my sponsor?”
“No! I assure you it is not I.”
“Then who?”
“You won’t believe me.”
Meredith searched her memory for snippets of emails and blog posts to give her a lead on her sponsor’s identity. “Elvis,” she said. “It’s Elvis, isn’t it?”
“Why would you—”
“Oh, for heaven sake. Viktor just tell me!”
“I understood your sponsor was to remain anonymous.”
“Viktor.” She narrowed her gaze and watched her husband undergo a crisis of conscious.
Glancing out the window for a moment, he seemed to come to a decision. “Rhonda,” he divulged.
“Rhonda? Rhonda Karl!”
Viktor nodded.
“You must be mistaken.”
Viktor arched an aristocratic brow.
“Okay. So you aren’t mistaken. I don’t understand why Rhonda would mentor me.”
“Rhonda and I have known one another for centuries. We are friends, Meredith. And because of this friendship Rhonda offered to mentor you.”
“I see.” Meredith didn’t really understand. Nor, at the moment, did she really care. “You knew.” she said, knowing the truth of her statement.
Viktor pulled her into his arms. “Yes. I knew something had happened to you, Meredith.”
“How could you know? You were miles and miles away.”
“I felt you die.” His words were a thick slur of emotion. His strong body shuddered with the memory. “In all of my life, I have never experienced such bereavement; such soul tormenting agony.”
Meredith overcome by emotion, swallowed to keep her tears at bay. “How could I have ever doubted our love? Doubted us?”
Viktor caressed a golden strand of her hair. “Meredith, I only know that my prayers were answered. We have a second chance at life.”
“Yes,” she whispered, resting her head against his shoulder. Their life would be filled with joy, writing, and each other.
“Meredith.”
“Yes, Viktor.”
“I must confess I have not been completely truthful with you.”
Meredith clamped down on the panic rising up to claim her new found tranquility. Sitting up to glance into her husband’s eyes, she strove to keep her voice calm. “What confession do you have to make?”
“I did not disclose the complete truth earlier. One of your assumptions were correct.”
And what assumption would that be?”
“The one involving our brother-in-law.”
“Elvis?”
“Yes.
“You were correct in believing your brother-in-law is a vampire.”
“A vampire? You are telling me that Elvis is really a vampire?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. It was the blood-sausage thing that. . .Wait. . .Viktor, what exactly did the change take place?”
“Umm, the 1970s, I believe.”
Meredith felt a tingle of apprehension. Her bother-in-law was soft spoken with a hint of a southern drawl in his voice. He played the piano and sang lullabies, lullabies which sounded a great deal like gospel songs. “Elvis has brown hair, Viktor.”
Viktor frowned. “I don’t know why this is such a grave concern for you Meredith. However, he colored his hair before his change. At least this is what I was told—”
“By whom?”
“Meredith,” he responded, exasperated. “I was Elvis’ sponsor.”
“Oh. Oh dear. We must break the news to Pippa.”
Viktor shook his head. “There is no need to concern yourself. Pippa already knows.”
“She knows?” Meredith squeaked.
“Yes. Now, beloved, there is something I must tell you about Pippa.”
THE END
Bell, Book, and Gargoyle
Sassy and Fun Fantasy, Series
Novella 2
Why does the doorbell always ring at the worst time?
With one hand trying to hold her hair on top of her head and the other stretched across the vanity, reaching for her hairbrush, Sybil Shayne frowned into the mirror as the door chimes echoed through her high-rise apartment.
“Oh, for the love of Max Factor,” she mumbled around a mouthful of hair pins, trying in vain to twist a stray lock of hair that insisted in obstructing her line of vision. Just one minute more and she’d have this pinned. . .
The peal of the doorbell was replaced by determined knocking. Whoever was out there wasn’t giving up. “Okay, Okay. I’ll be right there!”
Jabbing one final pin into her hair and fumbling with can of hairspray, she managed to fill her tiny bathroom with the sticky mist, before bounding down the hallway. Once she reached the living room she screeched to a halt and forced herself to walk slowly. Think poised, she reminded herself. She did have a reputation to maintain. This could be one of her clients on the other side of the door.
Hand on the door knob, she actually jumped when the doorbell sounded again.
Lipsticked smile firmly in place, she jerked open the door.
An attractive, dark-haired woman carrying a bundle of something, shouldered her aside and stepped inside the apartment. “Sib, shut the door. Hurry-up. I think someone may have followed me!”
Without thought, Sybil automatically followed her best friend’s orders. Sliding the deadbolt lock into place for good measure. “What do you mean, you’re being followed? Standing on tiptoe, she glanced through the peep hole to the outside hallway. “I don’t see anyone.”
After marching over to the floor-to-ceiling window, Pippa, yanked the gauzy curtains closed. “Turn off the lights! Never mind, hold her,” she said shifting the firmly wrapped blanket into Sybil’s arms. “She’s heavy,” she warned before darting though the apartment, snapping off lights like a wild woman.
Pippa was right, this bundle was heavy. “What can of puppy do you have, a St. Bernard? I feel like I’m holding a chunk of cement.”
“No! Don’t put her down. Just keep holding her. Magdalena her name by the way.”
“Not a puppy?” Sybil asked, alarm widening her eyes, and causing her voice to rise and octave or two.
“Pippa what are you up to now? Why are you all wet?”
Grabbing a towel from a kitchen drawer, Pippa dried her face and hair before yanking off her leather jacket and tossing it on the counter. “A water pipe broke on Sunset Blvd., next to The House of Blues, the concert was cancelled.”
“And this is important?”
“Yes, of course this is important! The underground areas are flooding.”
“Well, yes, I’m worried about Hollywood, too. I have to drive down Crenshaw to get to the studio in the morning. Ah, Pippa you aren’t involved in anything. . .illegal, are you? Animal rights groups have been known to get a bit carried away.”
“It’s not illegal. It’s just not safe,” she answered.
“Not safe? Not safe for whom?’
“For me. And now for you.”
“Not safe for me? Oh, no. You take your puppy and skedaddle up to Venice beach, where you can blend right in—”
The blanket jerked, and Sybil glanced down, and heard a very un-puppy-like sound. She watched as a long, narrow gray finger worked its way outside of the blanket. “Pippa! Pippa what is in this blanket?”
Pippa carried the blanket over to the granite counter top. Pealing the edges of the blanket aside, she made cooing sounds. “I’d like to introduce you to Magdalena. Don’t be afraid, Sybil. She won’t hurt you.”
“She won’t. . .Oh! Whoa! What is that thing?” Sybil stood transfixed. She wasn’t certain what she was staring at, she only knew she was too frightened to move.
The creature named Magdalena, bristled to her full height of thirteen inches, her sleek grey body with its delicate wings and her dainty hands and feet with their tiny shimmering nails, quivered at the unintentional insult. Sybil watched the creature’s pointy chin wobble for a second, only moments before her compassionate topaz eyes swam with silver.
“She’s a gargoyle,” Pippa said.
“She’s a gargoyle? A baby gargoyle?”
“No she’s not a baby. She’s more of a. . .garden gargoyle.”
“A garden gargoyle? There are different types?
“Of course. Most gargoyles are much larger.”
“Larger?”
“Yes. Like those across the street.”
“On the Deco-Art building?”
Pippa fished a grape from the bowl on the counter and handed it to Magdalena. The creature made a happy sound, placed the grape in her mount and chewed away.
“Pippa, are the larger gargoyles the ones you are hiding from?”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
“Sybil don’t get all upset. The gargoyles aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Don’t get upset. What do you mean don’t get upset. I’m in my apartment, minding my own business. Then my best friend comes to by apartment with some type of, of contraband—”
“She’s not contraband. She’s a nanny.”
“A nanny? A nanny, like she watches babies, cooks and cleans—”
“No, she’s a nanny like she oversees the nursery.”
“Oversees the nursery? Nursery?” Sybil walked over to the window and clutched the edge of the curtain to peer into the darkness across the street. “The pedestals are empty. Empty? How can that be?”
“Sib, it’s going to be okay—the gargoyles are the good-guys.”
Also by Connie Vines from Books We Love
Lynx, Rodeo Romance, Book 1
Brede, Rodeo Romance, Book 2
About the Author
Married with two grown sons, Connie Vines resides deep in the quirky suburbs of southern California. She has published over one hundred short stories and nonfiction articles, and has ghost-written two literary novels and one screenplay. The president of GothRom (Gothic Chapter of Romance Writers), Connie participates in local literary events and judges national and international writing contests.
Watch for the next novella in her Sassy & Fun Fantasy series: Bell, Book, & Gargoyle. And for those hankering for a cowboy, there’s Connie’s Rodeo Romance series: Lynx, Book 1 (ebook and paperback), Brede, Book 2 (ebook and paperback, 2015), and coming soon: Rand, Book 3.
Please visit her website: http://www.novelsbyconnevines.com
Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/connie_vines
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Easy Links to all things Connie: http://about.me/ConnieVines
Books We Love Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven