by Gayla Twist
“Thank you,” he said, as if I was the one doing him a favor. Bending over, he scooped up my turtleneck sweater and tried to struggle into it.
“Oh… uh… wait a moment,” I told him. I needed his neck exposed. “I… uh… I need you to do me one more favor before you put that on.” The man immediately lowered his arms, only half dressed in my sweater.
I had drunk a lot of blood since being turned into a member of the undead, but it was always in a goblet or a flask or something. It was always disassociated from the source. If I let myself think about it, I felt ashamed that, as a vampiress, I needed to feed off of mortals. But with blood from a blood bank, at least it was given voluntarily. Drinking blood from the neck of a living, breathing human had me a little intimidated. Jessie had never shown me how to do it. Do I just plunge my fangs into his flesh or what?
I approached the man. Underneath the smell of cigarettes and cheap cologne, I could smell his sweat. Underneath that I could smell his flesh and his blood. I used to think I had a good sense of smell when I was a mortal, but that was nothing compared to being a vampiress. My stomach growled, and I realized that I was hungry. Very hungry.
“You need help?” the man asked. He looked so pathetic, standing in his underwear with one arm through the sleeve of my turtleneck. I knew that if I wasn’t a member of the undead, the tables would be turned; I would have been the one being hunted. But it wasn’t like I was going to kill him or anything. I just needed a few pints to keep me going.
“I’m going to drink some of your blood now,” I told him. “It won’t hurt, and I won’t take all of it. You ‘re just going to need to eat a big steak when you get home.”
“I understand,” the man said. I didn’t see how he could understand; most mortals didn’t even realize that vampires existed. But I wasn’t going to argue the point; I was hungry, and he was willing.
“Please hold still,” I told him, adjusting his head to one side so that I had better access to his jugular. I felt the fangs in my mouth, sharp and ready to bite. With the man so close, I was practically drooling. “Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself.
And then his blood was in my mouth and it tasted wonderful . It was warm and pulsating with life. It tasted even better than any goblet of the liquid that I had ever drunk. Feasting from a living mortal was ecstasy.
I needed to stop. I didn’t want the man to get sick, just because I was famished. I told myself I would take just a few more sips. But then I kept drinking.
I wanted to stop. I knew I needed to stop. The human inside of me was shouting that I had to stop. But my body wouldn’t listen.
I was still a fledgling; I had a tenuous control over my undead self as it was. “You’re killing him! He’s going to die!” I shouted in my brain. “Leave him now or he will drop dead. Do you want that? Do you want to be a murderer?”
I didn’t want to be a murderer. I didn’t want to kill this sketchy man who was way too delighted to encounter me in an alley. I just wanted to save the love of my life and then live quietly with him until the end of time. I was killing the man and I knew I would never forgive myself, but I couldn’t stop.
“Aurora,” a voice said. I knew it was Alice, but I ignored her. “Aurora, stop!” she commanded.
Alice was my maker. I was compelled to obey her. Mostly. I paused for a moment, desperately wanting to listen to her.
“Leave him alone.” Alice gave me a firm shove, separating me from my prey. “You’ve had enough. If you drain him, I doubt you would ever forgive yourself.”
“I won’t,” I choked out. “I wouldn’t.” I wiped his blood from my chin and licked it from my hand. “I just want a little more. And then I’ll stop, I swear.”
“Aurora,” Alice growled. “Don’t make me slap you.”
Her words stung almost as much as a slap to the face. I was ashamed. “Sorry.” I hung my head.
“It’s alright,” she told me.
Alice starred into the man’s eyes. “You’re going to be okay,” she told him. “You need to go to the hospital now. You need to tell them that you attacked a girl, but she stabbed you in the neck with a pair of scissors and then ran off. You think the girl is okay, but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Hospital,” the man repeated. I wasn’t sure how much he was taking in.
“Oh, dear,” my maker said. “I think I’d better handle this.” She turned to me. “Aurora, go sit in the car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Then she picked the man up - he was easily twice her size - levitated off the ground, and flew into the night.
I hurried to the car, humiliated and ashamed. How could I have done such a thing? I was the kind of person who didn’t even kill spiders. And yet I’d just almost drained a man of his life. I was disgusted with myself. And the worst part was, I wanted more. I wanted to fly through the air and swoop down on another unsuspecting mortal so that I could feast on more blood. The thought was so awful, yet incredibly enticing. I was so ashamed that I almost made myself sick.
Running to the car, I locked myself inside. I wanted to kill people. Jessie was going to face the sun and I couldn’t even stop myself from draining some random man in an alley. Covering my face with my hands, I burst into tears. I hated myself. I was a monster.
A few minutes later and there was a sharp rap on the window. I prayed that it wasn’t some mortal foolishly checking to see if I was alright.
“Open up, Aurora,” Alice told me. She was standing outside the driver’s side door. “Maybe I should drive.”
I unlocked the door and wiggled over the gearshift. “Everything’s fine,” she said, after climbing in. “He’ll live. I dropped him off outside an emergency room; they’ll take care of him.”
“Thank you,” I stammered, still feeling mortified. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Alice reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m the one who is sorry. I know that you’re just a fledgling; you’ve never fed straight from the source before. I shouldn’t have left you on your own. You’re my responsibility. I need to take better care of you.”
It was a strange moment. It was almost as if my maker cared about me, rather than giving the impression that she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me. “That’s okay,” I said in a small voice. “I really appreciate you stopping me before I…”
Then Alice’s expression changed. Her face turned to stone and she pulled her hand away. She started the car and began driving without saying another word. For the first time, I noticed that she had managed to change her clothes. She was in black slacks, a black turtleneck, and a black jacket. They were fashionable women’s clothes and they all seemed to fit her perfectly. I decided to not frustrate myself by asking where she’d acquired her outfit. Plus, I had the feeling she wouldn’t tell me.
Chapter 4
Twenty minutes later, we found a place to abandon the sedan under an overpass. “We’ll go the rest of the way on foot,” Alice said, leaving the keys in the ignition and opening the door.
“Don’t you think we might want the car later?” I asked. I didn’t think we should shut ourselves off to any possibility of escape. She eyed me for a moment before palming the keys and getting out of the car.
“Where are we going?” I asked in a hushed voice as I trailed her down the street.
“We’re going to hide in plain sight,” she informed me.
“Then why did we have to dress in black?”
Alice cut down a street and then headed down a narrow flight of steps down to the river. “We’ll access the safe house via the Danube,” she whispered. “From here on out, don’t say anything; just follow me.”
I nodded.
Alice pulled a small gray beret out of her pocket and tucked her long hair inside. Even the hat was fashionable. For a moment I wondered if this was just some weird undead version of a prank.
I checked my jacket pockets. It turned out my friend who’d donated his clothes had a black ski cap. That was convenient. I stuffed my wild mane
of hair into it the best that I could. My maker then pulled on a pair of black gloves, which I thought was going a bit far. She really must have mugged a model who happened to be strolling around the outskirts of Budapest in the middle of the night.
I checked my pockets, but I had no gloves. Fortunately, the sleeves of the leather jacket I’d taken were long enough to cover my hands.
Alice gestured that I should follow her. She walked along a narrow path. When that petered out she began climbing a dirt embankment that ran up steeply from the river. When I scrambled up after her, she lifted a finger to her lips to indicate that I needed to be quieter. That was easy for her; she seemed to glide along like nothing was a struggle.
When the dirt turned to boulders the size of microwaves, Alice still wasn’t impeded. Glancing down at her feet, I noticed that she was in heels. I was in flats and I was struggling. What the heck was going on?
Alice rolled her eyes. Then she leaned toward me and said in the softest of whispers. “You’re a vampire; figure it out.”
I remembered that one of the benefits of being a vampire was that I could wear heels without having to worry about walking around on them all day. I could simply levitate an eighth of an inch off the ground. I’d seen more than one vampiress do it.
It was a cool trick, but I wasn’t very skilled at flying. I’d had very little time to practice. Still, if we had to sneak wherever we were going, then I needed to figure it out. We were headed toward some type of massive building that had several domed roofs all connected. Budapest had many pretty buildings, but this one was particularly large and impressive. I thought it must have been some kind of government building, or museum, or something.
When the microwave-sized boulders graduated to Mini Coopers, Alice crouched close to the ground. She skated over the rocks as smoothly as a lizard. I knew she wasn’t crawling at all, just skimming over the rocks, but it was still impressive.
I tried imitating her with mixed results. Sometimes I could glide over a boulder, but sometimes I just dragged across it, scraping my knees. And other times I simply started floating away and had to grab a rock to anchor myself to the ground. It was during one of my free-floating balloon attempts that Alice grabbed me and yanked me behind the rock I was trying to get around.
A searchlight from the other side of the Danube came on and raked the shore, sweeping back and forth. We both ducked down behind the rock and waited. Where the hell were we headed that there was a group of people on the other side of the river manning a spotlight?
After a few minutes, the spotlight switched off and we continued our climb. Near the base of the building, Alice signaled me to stop.
Getting to her feet, my maker wrapped her slender arms around a boulder, which had to have been the size of a station wagon. She struggled for a moment and then inched the massive rock away from the foundation of the domed building.
After setting the stone down, my maker slipped behind it. I stayed crouching on the ground, unsure of what to do next until a gloved hand appeared from the gap and beckoned me forward.
I stepped into a pitch-black passageway. I could see perfectly clearly, of course, but there were no light. It didn’t really matter either way because there was nothing to see, just gray walls made from limestone. Alice moved the boulder back into place. “You can speak, now,” she said, brushing her hands together to remove any dust.
I went with the obvious. “Where are we?”
“It’s the capital building,” she said. “That’s why there is all the security.”
“Aren’t there any guards?”
“There are, but they are usually posted around the perimeter, not down at the foundation,” Alice said. “Although there is a foot patrol from time to time. Somebody probably thought they saw something or they wouldn’t have hit us with the spotlight.”
“Sorry,” I said in a quiet voice. I had no doubt that I was the one who had drawn the guards’ attention.
“They didn’t find us,” Alice pointed out.
I looked around. We were in a space of about five by seven. There was nothing there that screamed undead safe house. I’d been in a few undead safe houses since meeting Jessie and they were usually a little more ornate. But I didn’t want to criticize my maker. “Okay…” I said, girding myself for a long and uncomfortable day. “Now what do we do?”
Alice suppressed a smirk and then raised a finger. “We go up.”
I looked up just as Alice floated past me, rising into the air, up a tall passage. I assumed it was some sort of airshaft. Or escape passage, perhaps. An oubliette? I wasn’t sure. Taking a deep breath, I tried to relax to focus myself on flying. I usually had to step off a building and try not to fall when I wanted to fly. But I could barely make out the soles of Alice’s shoes and I didn’t want to be left behind.
Closing my eyes, I thought of Jessie. I knew I had to outfight and outwit almost every vampire in Budapest to save him. And if saving him means I had to fly, then I damn well was going to fly.
“Careful,” Alice said. I had risen so fast into the air that I had bumped into her. “We’re almost at the top.”
I could see a ceiling to the shaft and a small, arched door just below it. The door was a very solid wood with metal reinforcing it. That seemed time period appropriate for the building. The surprising part was that here was a keypad instead of a lock. My maker must have noted my surprise because she said, “You need a key for a lock. People misplace keys. For a keypad, you just need to remember a combination.” Then she tapped her lip with her index finger. “Now, what was it…?” After a moment she tapped in some numbers and there was the sound of a lock popping open.
The door gave a loud squeak as it swung open and a little dust poofed into the air. “Guess no one’s been here in a while,” I said, under my breath. Alice gave me a sharp look. Then I remembered that this was Karl and Alice’s little love nest many years ago and she probably took my words as some kind of dig. “Because of the dust,” I stammered.
Choosing to ignore me, Alice flew inside, and I followed. It was just one room, a small space, maybe twenty by forty feet. There were no windows and just the one door. The walls were constructed out of the same rough stone of the boulders we’d been scrambling over. There were rich curtain fabrics hanging from the walls to give the impression that there were windows where there were none. There was also an ornate fireplace mantle with no fireplace. A few chairs dotted the room and there was a chaise lounge, but the main piece of furniture was an enormous bed. It was covered with a brocade comforter and piled high with tasseled pillows.
Alice approached the bed, picked up a pillow and then tossed it back down, causing a cloud of dust to billow into the air. “I guess it has been a few decades,” she said.
I scanned the room for a mini-fridge or any type of container that might be holding a few bottles of blood. I knew I was being ridiculous; it’s not like Alice could have known that Jessie would be snatched from our wedding and that we’d have to flee for our lives. No one could have foreseen everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours and then somehow thought, I should stock that old hideout with snacks, just in case. But that didn’t stop me from being hungry and craving something to eat. Like a rare steak, or a freshly slaughtered pig. Or a bare neck, covered in stubbles, and stinking of cigarettes and cheap cologne.
The sharp points of the fangs in my mouth shook me from my reverie. And then I noticed that Alice was watching me. “The cravings will get easier, eventually,” she assured me.
“When?” I had to ask.
“Give it a decade or two and you’ll feel more under control.”
“Great,” I grumbled. Then, to change the subject, I asked, “Is there another way out of here or is that the only exit?” I jerked a thumb toward the door.
There were two wardrobes in the far corners of the room. Alice pointed with her chin at the left one. “There’s a passage through there to the rest of the building.”
“What’s in t
he other wardrobe?” I wanted to know.
She shook her head. “Some old clothes. Probably some jewelry.” When I looked down at the oversized clothes that I was wearing, she added, “There’s probably nothing newer than the nineteen seventies.”
I shrugged, not really in a position to be picky. “What do we do, now?” I asked. I could rifle through the wardrobe for something to wear later. We’d avoided capture and raced across Hungary; but I had to wonder if there was any more to the plan.
“There’s a ball tomorrow night,” my maker said. “And it’s conveniently close by. We shall attend. With any luck, there will be talk about what happened at Vagnar’s castle. And maybe we’ll get word as to where they’ve taken my son.”
“How are we supposed to attend a ball?” I wanted to know. We’d just gone out of our way to have no one see us and now we were going to stroll into a ball?
Alice supplied the answer. “It’s a masked ball.”
Of course, it was. Vampires loved to dress up in lavish costumes. “With any luck,” Alice continued, “there will be a few bits and bobs in the wardrobe to help us disguise ourselves.”
Chapter 5
The clothes wardrobe had been stuff to the brim with designer suits and gowns. But, to my modern eye, they all looked pretty hilarious. The seventies must have been an interesting time for fashion. All sorts of cutting-edge fabrics were coming onto the market. Rayon and polyester being the classic examples. Plus, the prints and colors manufacturers put together made my eyeballs hurt a little; some were just hard to look at.
“Let’s pull everything out and then see what we’ve got,” Alice suggested. “We’ll sort through what has potential as we go.”
We began making assorted piles of men’s and women’s garments. There were also different accessories, including masks, and an unusual amount of jewelry. I spent several seconds staring at a ring with an enormous green stone that I was convinced was an emerald.