“Are you going to eat them or not?” said the bear.
“Be quiet you’ll scare them away. I’m much faster than humans but if they all run in different directions it would be a pain in the ass to chase them down.” Keith was naked and he got closer and closer to the juicy humans. An old man drove through on his Harley Davidson and gave him a thumbs up, which he did find peculiar since he was in the middle of the forest; he acknowledged the thumbs up with a nod. He pounced on the largest stump which he thought was the father and sunk his fangs into it. He sucked and sucked. “Not much blood in this guy. What the hell was he eating?”
“Not much at all,” said the bear. “My back is itchy. Scratch it for me will ya?”
Keith pulled his fangs out of the tree stump, went over and scratched the dead bear’s back. He followed the bear’s directions, a little to the left, then down. They enjoyed one another’s company and had become good friends. The black bear clutched his chest and then fell to the ground. “Are you okay?”
“Nope,” said the bear. “I just had a fatal heart attack.”
“You’re my only friend! Don’t die on me.” Keith pumped the bear’s chest for several minutes, tried to give him mouth-to-mouth but his jaw came off in his hand. “You really are dead?”
“That’s right I’m a goner. You should probably bury me or some other animal will come and scatter my bones.”
“Okay.” Tears ran down Keith’s cheeks as he dug a hole with his hands like a dog, earth went flying all over the place. The fact that he was naked wasn’t a pretty sight, things jiggled. When the hole was large enough, and it didn’t take long with his strength and speed, he gently laid the bear in the ground. He considered saying a prayer but didn’t know any. “I hope you go to bear heaven where there are probably lots of other bears running around, maybe eating people maybe not.” He then filled in the hole and patted it down gently. “I’ll never forget you.”
“Help!” the bear screamed. “I can’t breathe! Get me out of here!”
In a panic Keith dug the bear out of the hole but it wasn’t pretty. He pulled out pieces of him. He shook the dirt off the bear as best he could. “Are you okay? Talk to me! Are you all right? Can you breathe now?”
The black bear laughed and laughed. “Keith, I was just teasing you. I’m still dead. You can bury me again. You should have seen the look on your face man.”
Keith’s emotions were more than a little confused, and now he was annoyed. “That wasn’t very nice. Don’t do that again because I’m only burying you one more time and that’s it.”
The bear gestured to Keith with his paw for him to get a little closer. “I was talking to a worm down there and guess what he said.”
“I don’t know.”
“He said it’s tough to be a worm.”
Keith looked puzzled. He put the animal back into the ground and covered him with dirt. “I suppose it is tough to be a worm. Probably tough to be a deer freezing your ass off in the winter. There, how’s that?”
“That’s good. The worm and I are going to be best friends down here. I’ll see you when you get to heaven. Bye now.”
“Okay.” Keith sounded defeated as he walked away with is head down, slower than a human. He felt as if he was the only vampire remaining on the planet. He wiped the tears from his cheeks but didn’t look back.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
PIERS ANTHONY BECKONED TO JENNY but he seemed to be so far away. She could see his lips moving but couldn’t make out a single word he was saying. The author appeared to be shrinking in size and was obviously in some sort of distress. His face showed the stress of it all. Piers continued to beckon Jenny and was getting more and more frantic as he got smaller and smaller. Then Jenny saw Moon Diamond was dead, no brain activity whatsoever. That made her sad and a tear ran down her left cheek.
It was just after midnight and Jenny was asleep in her bed but restless. She jerked occasionally as the lion cub slept at the foot of her bed. She turned from one side of the bed to the other. The nightmare progressed; she started to jerk more and more with a loud moan finally waking her up. The girl wizard sat up with a gasp. The lion cub watched as she quickly got dressed and ran out of the room.
Allison and Dracula were snuggling as Jenny commenced to bang on their door. They looked at one another and both sat up in bed. It sounded like she was going to break the door down.
“Stop doing what you’re doing and let me in! Piers is in serious trouble!”
Allison ran and opened the door to see an alarmed Jenny. “What’s wrong?”
“Piers Anthony and Moon Diamond are in serious trouble. Mood Diamond might be dead. I saw it in a dream it was so clear.”
Had she been an ordinary child they would have told her it was only a dream, but she was miles from ordinary. Dracula had been in his underwear but he got dressed so fast that it must have been a record. He kissed Allison and blurred down the stairs with Jenny right behind him. The cub morphed into a full grown lion and blurred down the stairs and out the front door with Dracula and his daughter. A passerby ran as fast as he could at the sight of the lion.
Within seconds they arrived at the zoo and found Piers Anthony hanging upside down from a tree with Wang in the process of sucking his life energy out of him; they could see the white light leaving Piers and entering the wizard. The author was less than a minute from death. The Master was both sad and angry at seeing Moon Diamond’s lifeless body on the ground.
The lioness sank its teeth into Wang’s left leg, biting down hard and wouldn’t let go. The wizard’s scream sounded like a little girl. He was surprized and caught off guard and started to pound hard on Sarah’s head.
Zacharia’s soul shouted at them. “Kill that bastard!” But neither Jenny nor Dracula could hear anything.
Jenny blurred and broke the flow of white light from Piers to Wang as a person would snap a thread, but he turned and hit her with a bolt, taking a chunk out of her shoulder and she winced with the pain. Dracula stepped in front of the second bolt that was meant for Jenny; Wang sensed her powerful wizard status and figured that she was his biggest threat. It was his first time seeing Dracula in person, and although he had seen photos of him he didn’t recognize him in the heat of battle. Dracula grabbed him by the neck and pulled him right off his feet; he shook him around like a rag doll. The Master choked the head off the Chinese wizard and then watched it topple to the ground, as the miscreant turned to bones he hoped that it wasn’t too much for Jenny to handle, seeing her father so aggressive.
“Jenny, are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It healed.” Jenny picked up the cat. Moon Diamond continued to have a pulse but just barely. “Dad, the cat’s not dead but Zacharia’s soul has been released. I guess he’s gone.”
Dracula looked depressed. His handsome face didn’t appear quite so handsome because of his pain. Even after all that he’d seen over the centuries it was painful to lose a friend. “Zacharia’s dead?”
“All I know is that his soul is not in there.”
Dracula went over to Piers Anthony who remained in his upside down position. The Master snapped the rope and placed him on the ground beside the Siamese. He returned all the energy that had been taken from him and the author’s eyes opened. He was perplexed at Dracula staring down at him.
Jenny continued to hold the cat. “I think the poor thing is in a coma?”
There was a loud crunch as the lioness snapped one of the dead wizard’s femur’s in two, then the cat spat out the bone as if it left a bad taste in her mouth. Piers petted the unresponsive cat. Jenny handed the cat to Piers as she picked the dead wizard’s book up off the ground.
Piers stroked the Siamese and was saddened by its state. “What will you do with Moon Diamond?”
“I’m going to bring him home and see if he’s going to recover. He’s not dead yet but it doesn’t look good.”
Piers shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. Being a wizard, can you spell him back to con
sciousness?”
“Everyone seems to think that I’m such an almighty wizard, but my knowledge is probably comparable to a toddler. I’m going to check this thing out and see what’s in it, looks like a bunch of spells. But really, I need to get my hands on that Blood Book. Problem is I might not survive trying to kill that other wizard. When I was shot I sensed his interference. He wants me dead.”
Piers gave the cat back to Jenny. “It’s strange not being able to detect Zacharia inside the cat. I’m sure he’s happier now.”
Zacharia’s ghost pushed at Piers but his hand went right through him. “I am not happier now! All this floating around is annoying. If I have to spend all of eternity like this; I can’t even kill myself.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
ANNIE WAS COMFORTABLE WITH ALISTAIR and they got along well enough but she was restless. The more that she thought that she might live for another hundred years or more was not sitting well. Her soul had been ready for release; she would have died in less than three weeks had she not been turned. In fact she was worried about living so long. Was that why some vampires turned evil? Did their brains implode after living too long? What was she going to do with herself? Even now she had days where she was bored. How would she feel in five hundred years if she lived that long? She wasn’t much for travelling but perhaps she would have to start. There were certainly a myriad of things to explore in the world, and many new things to learn as well. Perhaps she was over thinking but she couldn’t control how she felt.
If she could save time in a bottle she’d break it over some bad guy’s head, she was quite sure of it. At least that made her smile. Happiness was an elusive creature that one could stand beside but it could never be captured, never knowing when it was going to flee to greener pastures.
The sky was filled with big puffy white clouds and she could see a bald eagle circling up there. There was also a streak of white from a high flying jet. It reminded her how she hadn’t yet figured out how to transform into a bat, and apparently with every other vampire it was second nature. Most sites on the Internet didn’t even mention the possibility that some vampires couldn’t be bats. She continued to be enamoured by the garden’s scent as she remembered swimming with her husband at the beach and how they had had so much fun all those years ago. Annie wouldn’t trade those memories for a fortune.
Alistair entered the garden where Annie was sitting. It made him sad to see her just staring off like that. He wasn’t sure if she was a troubled soul or just a confused one. Her moods were up and down, and he hoped that it wasn’t an adverse effect of having been turned into a vampire. Being a vampire was an extremely complicated chemical soup combination stirred by a supernatural spoon. “What do you want to do today Annie?”
“If you ask me that one more time I’m going to … oh forgive my moods Alastair. It’s going to take me awhile to get used to being like this.”
He sat down beside her on the ornate iron bench. “You’ll get used to it Annie, you’ll see. But unfortunately it does take time.”
“Alistair, how old are you?”
“So many years have gone by that I don’t actually remember. Let me put it this way. I met Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci in 1485. I believe he was in his thirties. You know, Dracula is looking for more red sheriffs, perhaps you should apply.”
Annie turned and stared at Alistair for a long time, and that worried him. It had only been said in jest but he didn’t like the look on that beautiful face. He was sorry that he had said it but he couldn’t take it back. The job of a red sheriff was fraught with danger. He desperately hoped that she wasn’t going to say what he thought she might. The conversation turned to the beauty of his garden, how the small path led from one group of spectacular flowers to another. They got up and walked around. Annie stopped and stared at the yellow spotted Canna flowers so delicate and full of life. Then there were thousands of Black Eyed Susan’s in the shape of a bat, and she imagined that it hadn’t been easy to accomplish that. Around the next corner was a beautifully carved wooden bench that was surrounded by pretty Begonia’s, with their yellow’s, red’s and pinks. A small path led to another bench and they sat there for a time.
“Do you suppose that flowers have different personalities? I mean two daffodils in a garden, do you suppose that one is different than the other.”
“That’s something that I’ve never considered but I suppose so. Here, I have a gift for you.” Alistair reached into his right shirt pocket and took out two inch high brown pouches. He emptied the contents of both into his right hand. In one pouch there had been black crystals sprinkled with red, and in the other bright yellow crystals. He rubbed his hands together so that the contents would mesh in a magical fusion, and then sparkles of red light turned into a beautiful red rose.
Annie took the rose and smelled it. “How on earth did you do that?”
“Ah, the complexities of magic; I do not pretend to understand any of it.” He watched as she stared admiringly at the rose. “That’s no ordinary rose Annie. You don’t ever need to put it in water AND it will endure for exactly seven hundred years, then it will simply vanish with sparkles of red light, or so I’ve been told.”
She gazed at the flower and loved it. “Alistair, I have no idea how long were going to be together here but I can tell you one thing, you’re never getting this back.”
“I can assure you I shall never take it from you. It’s a gift.”
Annie turned his face with her hand and gave him a tender kiss. “There, that’s payment for the flower.”
“Oh, I think not. Such a special flower must certainly cost at least two of those, maybe even a dozen or more. It was an expensive spell I kid you not.” They kissed again, this time even longer than the first. “I think that’s a bit too much, here I’ll give you your change.” And this time he initiated the kiss.
“What you said about me being a red sheriff. I know that you were only joking Alistair but it does have some appeal. Dracula probably wouldn’t consider me but he might. Believe it or not he really was the one that turned me.”
“That’s very dangerous business Annie. You might not live much longer should you actually go that route. You lack the experience of a battle tested fighter. That’s all a red sheriff does is fight and fight and fight.”
“I’ve already lived a long life.”
“Not thinking about me. I don’t want to have to mourn your passing.”
Annie smiled at him and of course she knew what he was doing. “I can’t live for you Alistair; I have to live for myself. Anyway, it’s just a thought.” A White Admiral butterfly touched down on the rose briefly and then flew off.
“Oh yes, that’s another thing about that rose Annie. What makes it most special is that a butterfly will touch down on it every single day, winter or summer, part of its magic you see. Even if it’s indoors the butterfly will appear and seek it out. You could lock it in a safe and the enchanted butterfly will find it.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
MICHAEL AND LAUREN WERE IN HER NEW YORK CITY LOFT enjoying Lauren’s time off. She had the occasional nightmare from being trapped in the coffin but was recovering nicely. Michael was beside her on the sofa flicking channels but they were smooching more than anything. They weren’t yet used to living together but they fit together better than most. The vampires already had traits of an old married couple. They had been talking about Michael becoming a red sheriff and he was quite excited. He was definitely looking forward to meeting the Master, although he was nervous about it. Michael was having dreams about the encounter and not always pleasant. In one dream Dracula bit him on the forehead and he remembered the blood running down his face, fortunately it had only been a dream.
A crack of thunder and a splash of lightening lit up the living room and the heavy rain commenced to attack the windows. Lauren snuggled in closer and he smelled the side of her face. She shook her head at his channel flicking as he couldn’t decide on anything; just as she got interested in som
ething he would change the channel, but she was so happy to be back with him she didn’t care.
“Lauren, come on, tell me what the ceremony is going to be like so I know what to expect. I want every detail painted, every shadow defined.”
“Nope. All I’m going to say is that it’s quite amazing. Lots of ancient vampires will be there to watch. And the atmosphere is grand. I’ve said too much.”
“You haven’t said anything. Come on! Details make life infinitely better.”
“I’ve said just the right amount.” Lauren batted her eyes at him and then they kissed.
“You, my fair lady. Ah?” Michael reached over and took the calculator off the coffee table from under Lauren’s swords; he pressed the buttons rapidly as he was pretending to calculate. “You have said 90% too less. Wait does that make sense? You’ve said 90% less than you should have. Yes that’s it. Come on, don’t be mean. I’m a little nervous about it. I’ll feel better if I know what to expect.”
Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) Page 23