by Martha Woods
“What’s our next plan, then?” Veronica asked. “To protect all of us?”
Tessa was caught off guard by Veronica’s declaration.
“I’m working on it.” Ally took out her cell phone, texted someone briefly, and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “I’ll send reinforcements for you. Meanwhile, I ask that you stay put until my people get here. You could try running again, but I am not convinced it would do anything other than put you in more danger.”
* * *
Kristian asked to speak with Ally alone before she left, casting a worried glance at Tessa. Tessa went to wash her face and have a moment alone to collect her thoughts. She checked out her reflection in the bathroom mirror. There had been a few tears on the way home, despite the fact she tried not to. Her eyes were red. She looked just as shocked and angry as she felt. The image of her foster parents’ dead bodies were still in her head, snapshots of the gore haunting her each time she closed her eyes. They weren’t good people by any measure, but what the Calder did to them, no one deserved. She was still trying to absorb the possibility that she was the target of the Calder. Being a freak was nothing new. Being one that anyone cared to pursue was another thing.
Tessa went into the kitchen for a bottle of cold water. She opened the fridge and when she closed it, found Veronica standing beside her in a space unoccupied only a moment before.
Tessa jumped. “I’m aware you can do that, there’s no need to show off,” she sniped.
“I’ll take that into consideration next time,” Veronica said. “Come with me. We should have a talk.”
Tessa raised an eyebrow in question, but followed Veronica to the patio in the back yard. A sweeping view of the ocean was visible from there. Once they were seated, Veronica pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You don’t smoke, do you?” she asked.
“No,” Tessa replied. “I could never afford the habit.”
“It’s probably better that way,” Veronica said as she lit up. “They kill you eventually. One of the benefits of being a vampire is you can abuse your body in all sorts of ways and it doesn’t matter. Kristian hates it, but a girl has got to have her vices. As immaculate as he likes his house kept, I wouldn’t dare risk the upholstery smelling like tobacco smoke.”
Tessa raised an eyebrow. “Good to know. But I’m sure that’s not what you brought me here to talk about.”
Veronica nodded. She tilted her head back and blew out smoke. She tapped a bit of ash off the tip. Tessa watched the ashes swirl away on the wind before she continued. Her emerald green eyes were wide and clear. She brushed back her light brown hair. She wondered if Veronica and her brother were blondes when they were children.
“I want you to know I like you, Tessa. You say what you think. And I can tell my brother cares about you. He hasn’t looked at anyone the way he does at you for many years. To be honest, not since Serena. How much did he tell you about her?”
“Not much,” Tessa admitted. “I could tell he didn’t want to get into it, so I didn’t push.”
“Good call,” Veronica said. “He doesn’t speak of her but his mourning for that woman has never fully ended.”
“Why is that?” Tessa asked. She was curious. Not to mention she was happy to discuss anything which didn’t reference the Calder and the new threat to her own life.
“The tie between a vampire and his maker is a complicated thing,” Veronica said carefully. “You know how you love your parents? Not when you’re a teenager, or even, say, an eight-year-old child who is old enough to be truly aware of the world and have a life separate from their families. Do you remember that pure, sort of unbridled adoration you had for your parents when you were maybe three or four years old? How they were your entire world?”
“I don’t know if I have solid memories of events from that time, but I do remember the feeling.”
“Okay. Add onto that the feeling you had for the first person you ever fell in love with. The way you were fiercely devoted to them and would die to protect them. Once you have the strength of those feelings combined, you have something resembling a shadow of the love one has for their maker.”
Tessa didn’t know what to say. “Okay.”
“Our parents died young, as many people did in those days. There was a bad strain of pneumonia going around and one winter and they both caught it,” Veronica continued. “I was thirteen years old, and Kristian was twenty. We were probably what was considered middle class by the standards of those times, but there were bills owed to everyone in town. My father ran a small restaurant, and Kristian was already working as an apprentice there. He took over. He worked day and night to keep the place open. He started selling baked goods in the morning, and closing up until evening for the dinner crowd. Very enterprising. It’s something my father never would have allowed, but it saved our business. We were able to keep a roof over our heads.
“When I was sixteen, I got married. Kristian had his dalliances I’m sure, but no one he was serious about. He was still working so much that he wouldn’t have had time or inclination for much else. I worried for him because my new husband wanted us to move to Boston, where his family owned land and a business. In those days, a woman had no say in such matters. By leaving town I was leaving him with no immediate family. Without a wife to care for him, my concern was he would work himself into an early grave.
“Communication between us was sparse, as you could imagine. I’d write letters and he would write me back but wouldn’t tell me everything. I could feel there was something wrong. I guess the same could be said on my end of things. My husband wanted a baby, which I seemed unable to give him. And when he got upset about it, he commonly used his fists to vent his frustration. It was okay for men to do that in those days.”
“I’m sorry,” Tessa breathed.
“Yes. Well, it was more than one lifetime ago. Anyway. I asked my husband if we could see Kristian for the holidays. We were always so close, but by that time we’d been apart for a handful of years and I needed to see him. I needed to know what was wrong.
“When I came home, what I found was not the Kristian I knew,” she said, her voice dropping deeper. Tessa could feel the sadness in her, along with anger and grief, other emotions which overlapped and blended together.
“My brother was in the house, alone, shutters drawn in the middle of the day. I thought he was dying, he looked so sick: sallow skin, puffy eyes with bags beneath them. He was thinner than I’d ever seen him. He refused to let me open the windows. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I tried to feed him, but he couldn’t keep anything down. My husband said Kristian was probably not long for this world and we should go back home and leave him be. I was never more appalled by my husband.
“I told him he could go home, and when the crisis passed I would join him. He didn’t like it, but for once I made a demand he listened to. I don’t know what I intended to do, Tessa, but I knew I was never going back to that man, even if it meant peddling on the streets or becoming a whore.”
Veronica paused, ground her cigarette into the ground with the tip of her black, red bottomed heel, and continued.
“My first order of business was finding out what was really wrong with my brother. Since he wouldn’t tell me, I followed him out at night. He was going to see this woman, Serena Faye. He would spend the entire night with her and hurry home in the hour before dawn. There were all kinds of rumors about her, and none of them good. Most said she practiced voodoo. Others claimed she was something far worse, though no one dared to say what. Well,” she said with an ironic chuckle, “who is to say rumors aren’t right sometimes?”
“How long had he been going to Serena by the time you came back to town?” Tessa asked.
“Almost a year,” Veronica said. “One night he staggered through the door, covered in blood. Finally, he confessed everything to me—that he had basically been a slave to Serena over the past months, letting her feed from him. She used it to keep her under his control, made him beg for sex
. He’d finally gotten wise to the fact that he was going to go the way of her other lovers, and he...he did what he had to do to live. But by then, Serena had pushed him to the edge of the abyss with her blood. All that was needed for him to complete the change was to feed.”
Veronica lit her second cigarette, and brushed an errant strand of hair behind her ear. She seemed calmer. Her thoughts were running like a cool spring, creek. Tessa licked her lips, waiting for her to continue.
“Kristian wanted to die. The two of us spent seven days and nights in the house. He was in bed most of the time, in terrible pain. I told him I would go find a man, someone that no one would come looking for, someone no good to the world. He didn’t want that. I offered him a rabbit I caught in the forest. He gladly took the rabbit, but it was not human blood. It helped to sate him for a short time but after that the pain returned with a vengeance. He’d shake, sweat, scream. It got so bad I gagged him so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. So many times, he begged me to go away. I refused. I promised I’d be with him to the bitter end, just as we were when our parents were on their death beds.
“That last night was a full moon. I remember because we were sitting on the floor of his bedroom, and there was nothing but the glow of the moon illuminating it. He had laid his head on my shoulder and I told of him of my awful marriage. And I told him then he should drink from me and be done with it. I had nothing to return home to. We would have each other if nothing else. Eventually, I got up and got a knife, and made a cut on my neck. Once he smelled the blood, starved as he was, he was not able to resist.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Tessa wasn’t sure what else she should say to a story like that. Her mouth felt dry.
Veronica gave her a small smile. “I want you to realize what he’s been through. This business with the Calder is a mess. I don’t know if you’re really the one they’re looking for. It could be they just figured you’re close to him, and hurting people in your life will get a rise out of him. I really don’t know. If I were you, I would consider doing the smart thing and get out of here. Before you get in any deeper with my brother, or these people decide to really make you into their target.”
“Veronica!” Kristian called.
He was only a foot away from them. This time Tessa managed not to jump. Being around these vampires was certainly a test on her ability to keep a poker face and look calm at all times. She pushed back from the table and made an excuse about wanting a nap after the trying day she had. Tessa could see the truth of her statement in Veronica’s weary eyes. No one had to tell her Kristian wanted to talk to his sister alone. He was fuming, eyes wide and hands trembling. It was not a conversation she wanted to partake in.
* * *
Tessa searched in her purse and found a half empty bottle of pain relievers. She thanked God she had a few left. She didn’t get headaches often, but when she did they could get bad quickly. A quick shower helped dispel the tenseness in her muscles. A t-shirt from Kristian’s dresser would have to do. She lay down on the bed, luxuriating in the softness of the mattress, running her fingers over the lines of gold embroidery.
She tried her best to block out thoughts of her foster parents’ violent end. There had been many times over the years she wished them both dead for what they did to her. Now that they were gone, she realized that was never true. She only wanted them to care for her. But like her real parents, it was beyond their ability.
Sleep didn’t come easily, but once she slipped into unconsciousness, the dream came quickly.
Tessa was back at the street faire, but she wasn’t sitting in a booth. Instead, she was walking around, browsing the wares of other merchants.
This faire was larger, brighter, and louder than ones she had been to lately. There were jugglers and musicians, all dressed in vibrant, jarring colors. An artist drew sketches in coal, charging five bucks a drawing. A man played the steel drums, a cheerful song that nagged at the edges of Tessa’s memory. He smiled at her as she passed, pearly white teeth gleaming. The closer she came, the more the world seemed to tilt beneath her. It wasn’t until she got close to him that she realized he didn’t have any eyes. The skin beneath his eyebrows were perfectly smooth.
Tessa clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming, her steps fumbling as she turned away.
Drawn like a magnet, Tessa found her feet leading her to a booth heaped with rare books. The woman behind the table smiled demurely.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” the woman asked her. She was a lady in her mid to late sixties with smooth ivory skin and a blush to her cheeks. Her long, silver hair was plaited into a single French braid that reached her waist.
“No, just looking,” Tessa replied as her hand hovered over the fabric covers.
“I think this may be helpful,” the woman replied, placing a red book in her hands. Tessa traced the pretty script across the cover until she realized that it was her own name.
She opened it, flipping through the pages from back to front. They were blank. Then, the pages began to bleed with black ink. She watched in amazement as she saw the pages being filled with writing, the same loopy writing that covered the front. She dropped the thing to the ground as if it burned her.
“Get this shit away from me!” Tessa screamed.
“Oh, but I think that you might find that you need it, darling,” the woman replied. “Look at your hands.”
Tessa had not picked it up, and it had not been passed back to her, but somehow, she was holding the book again.
“You need every word,” the woman said. Her eyes turned black. “Go now.”
Tessa ran. She flung the book into a trash can as she did. The thud echoing in her ears made her panic cede, if only a little. Eventually, she looked around, pausing to catch her breath.
She was back at the entrance of the faire.
A backpack hung from her left shoulder. When she opened the bag, the only thing inside was the book.
An empty table awaited her, with her fake crystal ball sitting in the middle. A crack ran down the center of it. Tessa found herself studying the crack as she took her seat at the booth. No sooner had she sat, she was approached by a potential customer.
“Good morning,” she said. “I wonder if you can help me. You can hear me, of course, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Tessa said, “of course.”
The woman nodded. It was only then that Tessa realized the woman was not speaking aloud. Not once had she ever moved her lips. She had blonde hair and eyes which had turned black, just like those of the book dealer. Reaching forward to touch her with long, thin fingers, she squeezed Tessa’s wrist. “Who are you?” she questioned. “Is it that you don’t know, or you just don’t want to?”
She jolted awake in bed.
Kristian was standing a few feet away, giving her a look of concern. “Are you okay? I heard you screaming.”
“Yeah,” she said, putting her palm over her heart, as if she could calm the frantic beating that pounding in her chest.
“Nightmare?” he asked. He sat down on the bed and rubbed her back, moving his hand in slow circles. Something about his cool touch was calming.
“I don’t have them often, but this one was… wrong.”
“What was it about?”
“Nothing…craziness,” Tessa said. She tried to smile but Kristian seemed unconvinced. “Do vampires have nightmares?” she asked, averting the subject.
“I know some who claim they do. I, personally, haven’t experienced any since my human life ended.”
“Do you ever miss it? The old life?”
“Some things about it perhaps, but not really. I do miss some of the people I left behind, I suppose.” His voice trailed off, then he worked his lips into a smile. “I think that I may miss food quite a lot, actually.”
Tessa nodded. It was sad, but her experience bore out his words. She decided it was best to change the conversation “What happened with Veronica?” she asked.
“I had
a talk with her about her need to respect you. It’s been a long while since I have had anyone in my life, and living here in the house. She needed reminding.”
“How much of our conversation did you hear?”
“Enough to know she told you it was a good idea for you to leave.”
“What if it is?” Tessa countered.
“All we know for sure is the Calder will destroy any vampires they come in contact with, and my family has been hunted for many years. They hurt your family. My bet is you’ll be safer with us than on your own. If you wanted to leave, it would be your choice, but I wouldn’t want you to feel pushed into it. For my part? I want you to stay.”
“I don’t think I have much of a choice,” Tessa said. “Because I want to stay with you.”
She hadn’t meant to say it but the words slipped from her lips effortlessly. And now that she had spoken them, it made everything real.
Kristian’s eyes sparkled.
Tessa found herself leaning into him. Her own worries crowded her mind, but she pushed them back. All she wanted was this one moment. Her hand rose, fingers grazing the cool skin of his cheek. Cradling the back of her neck with his hand, he brought her to him. Their lips met and, at first, he was gentle. It was the kiss he’d promised her when he first asked her to come with them. Tessa pressed into him, nibbling at his lower lip. She ran her fingers through his hair. He growled into her mouth, jerking her into his body.
And his phone rang.
With a guttural growl, he parted from Tessa and answered his phone.
“We’ve got company,” he told her.
* * *
“Well, you didn’t think I’d leave town without my reinforcements being in place, did you?” Ally said. “That would be highly unprofessional of me.”