by Raven Hart
“Yes, Captain,” she answered, using Melaphia’s method of addressing me. (I’m not as fond of being called “Uncle” as Jack seems to be.) Renee curtsied. “Hello, Miss Eleanor.”
The newly made vampire, Eleanor, paused to take in a long slow breath, as though she were smelling dinner on a stove somewhere. Then she smiled like the human she used to be, “Hello again, Renee.”
Melaphia set the clothes on the nearest table but kept her gaze on Eleanor as she spoke to Renee. “Okay, honey-girl, you may as well take these two out to play since everybody is stirring.” She didn’t sound too pleased about the change in schedule.
“I’ll race you to the kitchen door!” Renee called, and took off running. Reyha sprang up in pursuit, but Deylaud hung back with a whine of divided loyalty. He stared at Eleanor.
Before I could respond, Eleanor said, “I’ll be here when you get back.” Without a backward glance in my direction, Deylaud sprinted after his sister and Renee. I was still puzzling over his behavior when Eleanor leaned into my arms to speak in my ear. “I could eat my weight in filet mignon—raw.” In demonstration, she politely nipped my ear with her teeth.
“Soon, sweet. We’ll go hunting in a while.”
Melaphia, facing Eleanor’s back, gave me a look that spoke volumes: Be careful what you wish for.
I ignored it and changed the subject.
“I’d like you to set up some basic lessons concerning voodoo. Since Eleanor and I, along with Jack, are of the blood, it’s time we looked further into our strengths and weaknesses. Oh, and I suppose we should include Werm as well.”
Melaphia sniffed at the sound of his name. “That boy shoulda been put out of his misery,” she grumbled, hands on hips. “Not a lick of common sense. He’s almost too stupid to exist—even in the regular world.”
“Yes, I know.” I sighed and Eleanor pulled me closer, as if her body could separate me from Melaphia.
“How do you know you can trust him?” Melaphia persisted, but her gaze was on Eleanor now.
I didn’t have to read her mind to know what she was truly worried about: my trusting Eleanor too much. It couldn’t be helped, however. I’d made my bed, so to speak, and now would gladly lie down in it.
“I must trust him,” I said with more than a little urgency. “We have to be ready with all our strength in the likely event someone comes to avenge Reedrek.” I have more to protect now. I won’t be surprised again.
“I’ll see to it, then. We’ll begin tonight after moonrise. Please tell Jack to be here at midnight.”
Another surprise. Melaphia and Jack were usually thick as thieves. Why would she ask me to speak to him? She cut short the opportunity for me to ask by turning and leaving. I heard her mumbling to herself all the way down the passageway. Summarily dismissed, I understood a bit of how Jack must’ve felt in the past. I had the unusual urge to shout, You’re not the boss of me! after her. Instead I nuzzled Eleanor’s neck and thought about where I might find her filet mignon.
Jack
After leaving Connie’s, I’d made it to the garage through the tunnels and found it locked up tight, just as it should have been. Midnight Mechanics was open from dusk to dawn, supposedly to specialize in automotive emergencies. My human partner, Rennie, had gone home to get his own beauty sleep, so I could spend the day there without being bothered.
It’s hard for a vampire to get a good day’s rest outside a coffin. When a vampire sleeps during the day, it’s like he’s well and truly deceased—croaked, snuffed, drawn down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Don’t ask me why. That’s just the way it is.
But it’s even harder to rest when your undead heart is broken. Why oh why hadn’t I listened to Mel? Now my chance to be with Connie had gone up in smoke, almost literally, and she thought I was a freak. Make that knew I was a freak.
I don’t know how long I lay on the vinyl couch in the office and stared at the ceiling, my last conversation with Connie running through my head. Every time I thought I was about to drift off, the image of her face—angry, hurt, and confused—flashed onto the movie screen of my mind again, kicking my butt with guilt and sorrow.
After tossing and turning for hours, I finally got to sleep.
I was standing in the mist. The corona of light surrounding the nearest street lamp cast a dim pallor on pavement that was shiny with the dampness of cold drizzle. All the lights were out in the houses along the square. It wasn’t a night fit for the warm-blooded.
I saw a slender figure approach me. When he was still only a silhouette I knew I hated him. You had to hate anybody who walked like that. It was a go-to-hell kind of swagger, the cocky walk of someone who has never lost a fight, not with the mortals he liked to prey on, anyway. I knew he was a vampire.
When he got to the street lamp, he stopped and took a drag on his cigarette, looking me up and down, taking my measure. He was lean and lanky, dressed in black jeans, a navy peacoat, and heavy shit-stomping boots. His light hair looked almost orange, like it had been rinsed with blood. He let out a lungful of smoke and laughed. His laughter was as arrogant as his walk. My fangs ached.
“Something funny, punk?” I asked.
“You, mate,” he said in a working-class English accent.
A limey. It figured. Me and my Irish ancestry just loved those guys. Especially the ones who laughed at me. “Why don’t you let me in on the joke?”
“You’re the joke. That’s all. Here you stand, all ready to try and protect Savannah from me and my kind. And you just a pretender to the throne.”
“Throne? What throne?”
“Why, the Thorne throne.” He chuckled at his own joke.
His crazy talk was something right out of one of those ridiculous dreams everybody has now and then. I shook my head. But if this was a dream it was the most lifelike one I’d ever had. I could see every bloodshot line in the whites of his feline-green eyes. I could smell the human blood on his breath at ten paces. He’d just fed.
“Stop talking nonsense. What do you want from me?”
His smug grin disappeared, and he flicked the cigarette away. “I want your friggin’ heart on a pike, mate. And your sire’s as well. I think I’m gonna like being king of America.”
My fangs extended to their full length and I could feel my eyes dilate, taking in all available light, giving me a better view of my enemy. He shed his coat, and his dirty V-neck T-shirt revealed an ugly, knotted, hand-high scar starting at the hollow of his throat—a scar in the form of a cross. Damn, that must’ve caused some serious hurt. But not as much as I was about to give him.
“King this,” I said, launching myself at him, swinging with my right. He ducked and danced away, bouncing on his toes like a boxer. The cocky grin was back. I circled him, waiting for an opening. I felt the muscles in my back and shoulders became thicker and stronger. I was turning into the soulless animal I’d hidden for so long. I hadn’t gone into full vamp-out mode in a while. It felt downright liberatin’.
He flew at me then, leaving the ground as if he’d been shot out of a gun. The lean, corded muscles of his arm flexed as he balled his fist and threw a punch. I dodged and the blow caught me on the shoulder but not hard enough to spin me around. I squared up again immediately. There was shock in his eyes that he hadn’t hurt me. I hauled off and punched him in the jaw so hard that he flew six feet backward and nearly wrapped himself around the pole of the street lamp. His head connected with the cast-iron and it rang like a church bell. You’d think he’d at least be a little dazed, but he wasn’t. This was an old and powerful vamp.
He came at me again, fangs first, aiming for my throat. I lowered my head and caught him in the midsection with my shoulder, flipping him up and over my head. His back slammed on the pavement, and I was on him in the beat of a human heart, pinning his shoulders to the ground, going at his neck with my fangs. I could almost taste his blood and the power that came with it, but it wasn’t thirst that made me want to kill him. I knew in my dead heart�
�s core that this vampire was a threat to me. A threat to my existence and my place in this city, in this world. I don’t understand how, but I knew it as well as I knew my own name. My lips pulled back, unsheathing my awful teeth completely. But before I could sink fangs into flesh, a hand gripped my neck from behind.
It was William.
“Not this one,” he said. “This one is mine.”
I woke standing straight up and sweating bullets. So it had been a dream. Nice time to find out. The couch I’d been sleeping on was turned over. All the papers from the desk were on the floor and the desk chair was broken in half. I’d tried to kill another vampire in my sleep, which was a first in the roughly century and a half of my existence as a blood drinker. In the process I’d managed to trash the office—Rennie was gonna be pissed. Before I could get the couch right side up again, the phone rang.
“Yeah?” I muttered.
“Jack, it’s Olivia.”
It was our vampiric English rose, who’d been with us when the struggle with my grandsire Reedrek went down. She’d been back in Jolly Old for weeks now. What could she want?
“Honey, I’d love to chat, but do you know what time it is over here? It’s full daylight–thirty. Before you called I was dead to the world,” I lied.
“I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m in an awful way. There’s something I have to get off my chest.”
And what a chest it was, I recalled. “Now?”
“Yes. Please. I’ve got to talk to someone.”
Crap. What was it with me and other dead people? Not just vampires, but ghosts, corpses, newly dead, moldy-oldy dust-to-dust dead. They loved to confide in good old Jack. I couldn’t walk through a cemetery without an invitation to chat. Other vamps didn’t seem to have this problem. I flexed my sore hand. On top of being burned, I’d punched out the couch with it. Olivia and I had been through a lot together in just a short time, so I guessed I owed her this much.
“Okay, darlin’. Shoot.”
I heard her draw a shaky breath before beginning. “Do you remember I told you once that there were consequences—dire consequences—to breaking your word or lying to a master vampire?”
“Uh-huh.” Oh me. Already I didn’t like how this was starting off. Whatever hole she’d dug for herself, I knew she was about to try and drag me in with her. I was on the edge of telling her I had a quart of O positive on the stove about to boil over, but I wasn’t fast enough.
“I’ve misled William.”
Damn. Here it came. “Olivia, I—”
“I sort of lied to him, and I’m suffering the consequences. I can’t sleep. I can’t feed. I’m shattered, Jack. You’ve got to help me.”
“You what? How can I help?”
“I’m not sure it’ll do any good, but I’ve got to tell someone. You’re his offspring; maybe sharing it with you will lessen the pain.”
Oh, that was just great. Want to spread around some pain? Just call Smilin’ Jack. “Olivia, I’ve got my own problems here—”
“Please, Jack! It’s not as if you were the one who lied to William. Perhaps you won’t suffer any consequences at all.”
“If you tell me a secret William needs to know, and I don’t tell him, it’ll be like I’m lying to him every stinkin’ day!”
“I’m begging you, darling Jack,” she whimpered. “Only you can take away a measure of this pain. I’m sure of it. I’ll be forever in your debt. Think of all we’ve been through together…”
What she was really saying was All you put me through. She was laying a major league guilt trip on me. And it was working. We’d done the nasty back in October and through an undead trick of fate and the effects of the voodoo blood, she wound up half dead. Well, deader. That’s not how it’s supposed to go down.
She sobbed and said, “Oh, why did you have to be different? If our mating had gone as it should have, you’d be bound to help me and I wouldn’t have to beg on bended knee.”
The visual of Olivia on her knees sent a gratified tingle through my johnson. I rolled my eyes. Could I help it if I was special? “So what exactly is in it for me again?”
“Anything…”
“That doesn’t mean much, darlin’, now that we’re a whole ocean apart.”
She sniffed but remained silent.
Feeling half like the con and the other half like the conee, I gave in. “How about you never mention our little encounter to anyone. Especially any of your female posse.”
“Done. Thank you.” After a couple more sniffs, she continued, “Okay, it’s about Diana.”
That name slammed the brakes on my goodwill. Uh-oh. Yup, this was going to be bad. “What about her?”
“I found her.”
“What do you mean you found her?”
“I have it on good authority that she lives as a blood drinker in Eastern Europe with a powerful vampire whom Reedrek gave her to right after he made William.”
I clutched my head, which had begun to pound out a snappy little tune. “But you told William the entry in your book was a mistake. You told him she’d never been made into a vampire. What happened?”
“I…lied.”
I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t having another bad dream. “Are you crazy? Why the hell would you lie to William about his mortal wife? It could be the most important thing that’s happened to him in five hundred years. What were you thinking?”
“He can’t know!”
“What? Why?”
“The man bound to Diana is one of the most bloodthirsty vampires in Europe. If I had told William the truth, he would have moved heaven and earth to get to her as soon as he could.”
Heaven and earth and anything else standing in his way.
I thought back to what William had said when he told me about Deylaud seeing what he thought was Diana’s name in Olivia’s book. If I truly believed my wife was alive, I’d already be on my way to find her.
Olivia said, “When they were alive, their love was legendary, according to Alger, who was around back then as well. William was the dashing, handsome lord and Diana was his beautiful lady. Alger said William would have done anything for her, and she was as devoted as a wife could be.”
“Until,” I reminded her, “Reedrek murdered them and their son. And until he made William into a blood drinker.”
“That’s right. William saw her buried, thinking she would rest for eternity. That was the end of the story as far as Alger knew. The rest I have only recently learned through my network of contacts. William asked me to find the Diana in my book if I could but now I don’t dare tell him the truth.”
“So what did happen next?” I asked, caught up in the story now myself.
“As far as I can tell, William was unconscious when Reedrek made the blood exchange with Diana. An offspring of Reedrek’s, Hugo, was nearby, wreaking havoc on William’s vassals. Reedrek summoned him immediately and gave Diana to Hugo, who, after the mating ritual, spirited her away to the east.”
The thought of any wife of mine being ravished by Reedrek and his friends turned my stomach. It would probably make William insane.
“How far east?”
“We’re still working on pinning them down. Our best guess at this point is Russia.”
I shivered. Savannah in January was as frosty as this cold-blooded boy ever wanted to get. I couldn’t imagine vamping it up in points north, much less Siberia. “So William never knew?”
“No. William was never made aware of Diana’s existence. That’s the way Reedrek wanted it. He wanted to have William’s full attention.”
“Damn. If William ever gets his hands on this Hugo, he’ll rip his head off and stuff it down his neck hole.”
“If those two ever met, it would be a disaster. All-out war. That’s why I lied to William.”
“What do you mean? We can’t just leave her there with that creep,” I said. “William’s got some serious mojo working for him with the voodoo blood. There’s nobody whose ass he can’t whip.” I felt sil
ly saying this, like a kid on the playground saying, My dad can beat up your dad. It didn’t make it any less true, though.
Olivia sounded like she was nearing the end of her rope. “It’s more complicated than that. Besides, Diana has been with Hugo for a very long time. Another century or so won’t hurt her. The clan that Hugo leads has affiliations with dark lords all throughout Europe. Especially parts of Europe whose blood drinkers we don’t know much about. We don’t know what their numbers are, how ancient, how powerful. We Bonaventures can’t afford to bring their wrath down on us before we’ve gotten a chance to organize ourselves and plan our defenses. And even if it didn’t trigger an all-out war, William would have no idea what he was walking into. I just lost my beloved Alger, and William has become like a sire to me. I can’t lose him. I won’t.”
Her voice broke a little as she said this last bit. I didn’t doubt for a minute that she loved William, and I sure as hell didn’t want to see him get killed, especially when yours truly would probably be going down right along with him. “I hope you know getting this off your chest just kicked the shit out of my day.”
“I’m sorry, darling. But I think I do feel better already. Now don’t forget to mask your thoughts carefully until we reach the day where we can tell William about Diana—if we ever can. Is that going to be difficult for you?”
Now she asks me. “Nah. It’ll be a breeze.” I didn’t care if she heard the sarcasm in my voice. A vampire can normally read the thoughts of his offspring. It’s a psychic vampire thing. With practice you can learn to protect your thoughts, but you really have to concentrate to make it work well. It’s kind of like thinking about baseball when you’re—well, let’s say trying to delay things, if you get my meaning.
“Enough about me and my problems,” she said.
Which were now my problems. Lawsy.
“My sweet Jackie,” she cooed. “How are you doing these days?”
“I’ve been better.”
“Oh my. Trouble with the lady constable?”
“You could say that.”