A Girls Guide to Vampires

by Katie MacAlister

I released her earlobe. "Looking to see if I can see through to the other side. Did you not hear me? I'm seeing visions! Visions! Strange, unexplained phenomena whereby I'm possessed by the emotions and feelings and sights of someone else. In this case, I'm feeling things from someone who's…"

  I couldn't bring myself to say it.

  "Someone who's what?"

  "A vampire," I mumbled, wishing now I hadn't brought the subject up. It was far better to go quietly insane on my own than to suffer the embarrassment of admitting I was being used by a creature whose existence I had long and vociferously denied.

  "What? I couldn't hear you."

  "A vampire," I said a bit more loudly, peeking at her from under lowered lashes.

  She blinked at me. Twice. "OK."

  I made scrunched-up lips at her. "OK? Is that it? I tell you—that's me we're talking about, the skeptical one—that I'm having visions coming from a real, honest-to-goodness, card-carrying vampire, and all you can say is OK? You're not going to laugh or make fun of me or tell me I must be imagining it?"

  "Idiot!" she said fondly, grabbing my sleeve and pulling me toward the stairs. "It's because I know you that I know you must be going through hell experiencing something that's way beyond your control. Come on, Christian's waited long enough. Let's go see if we can't find the Dark One who's giving you all the trouble."

  "Wait a minute! You're not even going to question whether or not I'm really having visions? I thought I was going insane before I decided to believe in them! The least you can do is appreciate how hard this is for me!"

  "Oh, I know it's hard for you. I know you must be wigging out at it, and squirming with embarrassment because now you have to admit that I was right about vampires all along, but I'll save my gloating for later."

  "How grateful I am for your tender mercies. That aside, how do you know that the one who is affecting me will be at the fair?" I asked, following her down the stairs, more than a little befuddled by her quick acceptance of something that still gave me the willies to think about.

  "Has to be," she called back over her shoulder. "He's marked you. That's the first step in the Joining, and everyone knows they can't Join with you unless they're physically close."

  I looked down at my hands as we descended the second flight of stairs. "I'm not marked."

  "That's what the visions are—his mark. If they're like what's described in the books, you're experiencing things that he sees and feels, basically all his strong emotions. Dark Ones can only do that with their true soul mate, so if he's projecting to you, that must mean he's marking you as his."

  Instantly I thought of Raphael.

  "How many visions have you had?" she asked as we rounded the landing.

  "Hmm?" I pulled my mind from the thoughts it was pursuing. "Well, the one at Miranda's was due to the gin, I'm sure, so that leaves me a couple last night in the bar, and one just before we had dinner."

  She paused and turned around to face me. "You had one before dinner? When?"

  "When I was standing in the hall with Christian."

  "Christian?" She thought for a minute, then shook her head. "Nope, can't be; we've seen him eat and drink. Hey!"

  Her eyes met mine. A chill rippled down my back. I swallowed. "Raphael."

  She nodded.

  "The last vision happened when Christian was kissing my hand. Raphael was standing in the doorway, watching us."

  "Cool!" she breathed.

  "It is not," I snapped, pushing her to get her going. She stood where she was.

  "When the first visions in the bar came, where was Raphael?"

  The sensation of blood flowing down my throat, subduing the hunger howling inside me flashed into mind. "He was. uh… feeding."

  Her eyes widened until I thought they'd pop out. "Oh, that is so cool! He shared his feeding with you? Wow! What did it feel like? What did he do? Could you see everything?"

  I closed my eyes for a minute and took a couple of deep breaths to rid myself of the remembered images. "Yes, and I'd really like not to remember it, if you don't mind."

  "OK." She thought for a moment. "So you had a vision before Raphael came into the bar? Just before?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, then, there's your answer!" She started back down the stairs.

  "Wait a minute!" I hurried after her. Christian was waiting for us at the door. "Roxy, wait up—what do you mean, there's my answer? What answer?"

  "Sorry, Joy's having a bit of vampire trouble," she told Christian in a confidential tone that made me want to die right there on the spot.

  Not surprisingly, he looked astonished by the news. "Is she indeed?"

  "Do you have to tell everyone?" I hissed, pinching her arm, flashing a reassuring smile at Christian. He just looked at me with a faintly puzzled frown between his brows, no doubt trying to calculate how much trouble it would be to bundle me away to the local loony bin.

  "That's OK, Christian believes in vampires. Remember the 'more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio'? Joy's having visions," she added. "She's been marked by a Moravian. I was just explaining to her that it must be Raphael, since he refused to eat in front of us."

  "Wait a minute," I said, remembering something she'd said that morning. "You said just this morning that he couldn't be one because he had a beer at the bar."

  "Ah," she said cannily, throwing open the door and charging out into the night. "But did you actually see him drink the beer? Let's shake a leg, people. I want to examine Raphael up close. Imagine sitting next to him and not even knowing what he was!"

  I grabbed Christian by the hand and hauled him with me as I ran after Roxy. "But what did you mean when you said something was the answer to my visions?"

  She stopped just beyond the stretch of graveled area that served as the hotel's parking lot. "Think about it. You have visions seeing Raphael approaching the bar—"

  "A man. I didn't see his face. It could be anyone."

  She gave me a condescending look. "Hardly. OK, so you see this man approaching the bar, projecting his thoughts and feelings to you as he gets closer, right?"

  I shot a quick glance at Christian, realized I was still holding his hand, and dropped it with an apologetic moue. "You must really think I'm nuts."

  "On the contrary, I find this fascinating," he said. "Who knew there were such dark depths to Raphael? He seemed like a perfectly ordinary man to me."

  That set my hackles to rising a bit. "He's anything but ordinary."

  His eyebrows went up. "Indeed."

  "Do you want to hear this or not?" Roxy interrupted. I nodded. "Where was I? Oh, that's right. So, you're having these visions of what Raphael or whoever is seeing and doing as he approaches. Did it get worse just before he came in?"

  I nodded again, my skin prickling with the remembered sensation of danger approaching. I frowned for a moment, examining that thought. Why was it that when Raphael approached the bar I felt danger drawing closer, but when he was angry with me earlier tonight I felt perfectly safe with him? I asked Roxy.

  "Easy," she said, making an impatient gesture with her hands. "He wasn't aware of you before he saw you, but he was afterwards. A Dark One would never harm their Beloved, you know that as well as I do. To get back to your visions—once he entered the bar and saw you, he must have recognized you for his soul mate, seen that you were picking up this thoughts, and closed them off to keep from distressing you further."

  I twisted my hands together as I thought it over.

  "Makes sense, doesn't it?" Roxy asked Christian.

  "It would appear to, yes."

  "But this evening…" She shot an appraising glance at Christian. "Dark Ones are notoriously jealous about their soul mates. I'd suggest that in the future you keep your flirting with Joy to a minimum, unless you want to tangle with a really pissed-off vampire."

  He gave her a faint smile. "That would, I admit, be a unique experience."

  She nodded. "Any more questions? No? Good. Let's go, I want to check ou
t the fair and see how many other vampires are there, and then we'll corner Raphael and get all the dirt from him."

  "We will do nothing of the kind," I said firmly as I stalked behind her, Christian at my side. "I'm willing to concede, since the only other explanation is that I'm going quite, quite mad, that I'm having visions, and the visions' source is a vampire, but we don't know if it is Raphael or not. The poor man could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

  "Hrmph," she snorted, slowing down until she was walking on the other side of Christian. "How likely is it that there's another Dark One lurking about that you haven't seen? You said yourself that Dominic is fake, and he's the only other guy around here who fits the bill, right?"

  "Maybe. Regardless, I don't want you saying anything to Raphael."

  "Now you're being stubborn. There's no other explanation that fits. What do you think?" she asked Christian.

  He raised both hands in a gesture of neutrality. "I believe I will leave this discussion to the experts."

  "I'll give you some of the Book of Secrets novels in the morning," she said. "You read them. You'll see I'm right. I'm always right when it comes to Dark Ones!"

  Fifteen minutes' walk away from the hotel was a wide, open meadow. The north end of it was given over to the GothFaire, a circle-shaped collection of trailers, small tents and wooden booths, and one large main tent structure at one end where the bands performed. It was strongly reminiscent of a small traveling circus, right down to the smell of stale smoke and popcorn. The south end of the field, empty when we had seen it the morning before, was starting to fill with individuals' tents, trucks, cars, and portable toilets. Beyond the tent city rose a dark line of trees marking the edge of a forest, through which a turret of Drahanská Castle could be seen, the rest hidden by the trees.

  "What's the game plan, Rox?"

  "Tarot card readings, Kirlian aura photos, palm and rune-stone readings—Arielle is doing those since their palm/ rune-stone reader left—spells and incantations…"

  "It sounds like one of those psychic fairs they set up down at the bingo hall," I protested.

  "This is better. The GothFaire is run by real vampires, so you know everyone working for them must be the real thing, too."

  "Why settle for imitation vampires when you can have the real thing?" I teased, looking to Christian for sympathy. He just shrugged.

  I ignored Roxy's frown. "OK, let's start at the top of your list. Who's doing the tarot card readings?"

  "Tanya."

  "Thanks for warning me. I'll stay away from that booth. What about the aura photos?"

  "Done by a couple named Reynaldo and Demeter," she answered, reading the fair pamphlet that was pushed in our hands after we paid the admittance fee. "Bet Reynaldo's a vampire. Oh, this sounds interesting! There's a woman who does past-life regressions. At eight, Dominic is doing his Magique Macabre show, and then at ten, the music starts. Tonight there's two bands—Six Inches of Slime is first, followed at eleven-thirty by a local band named Rychlovka." She looked up at Christian. "What's that mean?"

  He choked.

  "That bad, huh?"

  "I fear so."

  "Really?" I asked as Christian grabbed my elbow and steered me around a group of teenagers dripping in narrow chains, clunky shoes, and more black vinyl than you could shake a stick at. "Is it a swear word? If I get really annoyed with Roxy, can I snap out 'rychlovka' at her?"

  He laughed. "It is not a word of swearing, no. It means to engage in a quick sexual act."

  "Rats. I guess I'll just have to make do with do prdele"

  He choked again. I grinned and looked when Roxy pointed to a small black tent with a crowd gathered around it. "What's over there?"

  The crowd parted as we approached. One of the vinyl-clad teens was doubled over a bucket. I glanced up to a sign hanging on the tent behind them. "Piercings. Remind me to avoid this tent."

  "You and me both, sister," Roxy said with a dark look at the ralphing teen. She turned her attention back to the pamphlet. "Hey, this sounds like it'll be right up our alley—a Dungeon Room! Interesting, huh?"

  I made a face at her suggestion and continued what I'd been doing ever since we had arrived—scanning the crowds for a tall, handsome man with unnatural amber eyes, and what I feared were even more unnatural dining habits.

  "Dungeons, I have found," Christian spoke up in a voice that was as smooth as milk chocolate, "do not in general meet the expectations one has of them. What do you suppose is the attraction in this particular dungeon room?"

  "Um… let me see if it tells." Roxy flipped over the pamphlet. "It just says 'Enter the Shadoworld and fulfill your dark destiny.' What do you think that means?"

  I stopped peering around the crowds long enough to grin at her. "I think it means you'd better stay away from it unless you want to experience the sting of the lash on your tender little flesh."

  "You have bondage on the brain." She tucked the flyer away and clutched Christian's arm, giving him one of her impish grins. "I bet Christian isn't afraid of a little dark destiny. You'll go with me to the dungeon room, won't you? Joy, as you can plainly see, is too much of a poop to have a little fun in a dungeon."

  "Sure, go ahead." I shooed them toward the blood-red tent that loomed ahead of us. "I'll go have Arielle read the runes for me while you're frolicking in the Merry Widow."

  Roxy rolled her eyes and pulled Christian toward the red tent. "That's Iron Maiden."

  "I will not frolic in an Iron Maiden," Christian protested. "In it there will be no room for the dancing or the Maypole."

  Roxy stopped and stared at him for a minute. I giggled. He smiled.

  She turned back to me. "Just remember that you can't let Raphael take the third step of Joining until I'm there to watch."

  "The third step?" What was she talking about? "What happened to the second step?"

  She dropped Christian's hand and with a big, exaggerated sigh hurried over to where I stood, counting on her fingers as she said, "The first step is the mark, right?"

  "Right. You say that's the visions."

  "And who knows Dante's books better than anyone else on this whole planet?"

  "You do," I acknowledged.

  "Right. Trust me, the visions are his mark, the first step. The second step is—"

  "Protection from afar."

  "Exactly. And who was it who grabbed Dominic and slammed him up against the wall with one hand when he was about to bite your wrist?"

  "Well—that wasn't protection from afar, though."

  "Afar, a-near, same difference," she shrugged. "It was protection, and that's all that matters. And if I hadn't interrupted you, he'd probably have taken the third step."

  The memory of his body pressed against mine was not one I'd dismissed. I'd carried it around, tucked away in a corner of my mind like a little treasure, something I could bring out and examine in private. I said nothing.

  "Just promise me he doesn't lock lips with you until I'm around to see it, OK?"

  "Go. Away."

  She grinned and dashed back to Christian, grabbing his hand and hauling him to the Dungeon Room tent. He sent me a pitiful look over his shoulder. I blew him a kiss.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  « ^ »

  Because the real moneymaking attraction of the evening—the Goth bands—wasn't slated to start until later, the people who were present during the early hours of the fair were almost normal looking. Yes, there was PVC and vinyl and thick, clunky-looking shoes, and black, black, black everywhere, but there were also a lot of couples, young people in small groups walking around giggling and pointing out the oddities to each other, and even some families, although I noticed that admittance to several of the more questionable attractions was limited to those over the age of twelve.

  Czech, German, and French were the predominant languages heard, with a smattering of English here and there, giving truth to what Christian had said earlier about people traveling to the ar
ea from all over Europe for the All Hallow's Eve celebration.

  I worked my way through the thickening crowd, heading for the booth with a sign painted with a big blue hand garnished with a gilt Mannaz, one of the rune symbols used in divination. Happily for me, the next-door booth—Tanya's tarot card booth—was vacant. Although I had no qualms about facing her again, I didn't particularly want to encourage another scene like the one we'd been through earlier. I figured Tanya must be off casting spells and grinding up warts for love potions, which suited me just fine.

  Arielle was seated at a low table covered with the standard moon-and-stars cloth you see at a lot of occult shops, cupping a blond twenty-something's hands in hers as her fingers traced lines on the woman's palm.

  "Your life line is very long and very strong. This is always a good sign," she told the woman in German. She gave a shy smile to the man standing behind the woman's shoulder. "You have only one marriage line."

  The blond woman tittered and turned to shoot coy looks from under her lashes to her companion.

  "Your heart line joins your line of head, so in relationships, your head very much controls your heart."

  The woman dimpled at her, pleased. I waved at Arielle and got in line behind the couple. So far what I'd heard was pretty standard fare—generalizations and vague concepts that were meant to send the customer away with a warm, happy glow.

  "You have only one infinitesimal line of fate. This means that fate will not play too much of a role in your life. This is good, you understand? It means you are in control of your life."

  "Oh, yes, very good," the woman agreed, starting to get into the reading. "I like to be in control."

  Her companion snorted in obvious agreement. She ignored him, peering into her palm as Arielle pointed out a bump. "Your inner Mount of Mars indicates aggressiveness, but your outer Mount of Mars indicates self-control, so sometimes you find yourself wanting to push everyone out of your way, but you hold yourself in check."

  The woman was nodding at everything Arielle said, her brows drawn together as she watched Arielle point to her fingertips and describe how they indicated she was a creative, artistic person. Five minutes later, Arielle concluded that the woman would have two children, travel extensively, and have intermittent luck throughout her long life. The German woman, all smiles after the reading, handed over the reading fee, slipping Arielle an extra couple hundred koruna as a tip before heading off to have something on her boyfriend pierced (Nostrils? Nipples? My German wasn't up to anatomical piercing dialogue).