by Gayla Twist
I wasn’t going to cry. They wouldn’t have the pleasure of seeing the Bride of Dracula break down. My fists were clenched together so tightly that my fingernails were cutting into the palms of my hands. Focusing on the pain, I was able to keep tears from spilling down my cheeks.
A pair of guards grabbed me and I was goose-stepped through a tunnel into the basement, which was set up as a prison with numerous cells. They’d apparently planned for more criminals than they were catching. I was abruptly thrust into a random cell in a block of empty cells.
My new lodging contained a cot with a worn, wool blanket, a sink and a toilet. The undead didn’t use toilets, so that seemed odd, but maybe the Bishops felt the need to lock mortals up from time to time. Or maybe they had no way of explaining to the mortal contractors who built the cells that a sink was fine, but a toilet was not necessary.
I had no books, no magazines, no cellphone, no cellmate, nothing to distract me from the mess we were in. All I could do was pace the floor and worry about Jessie. I hated that his love for me had put him in this position. Viktor was dead because of me. And the truth was, I was the one who had held the stake that pierced his body and ended his eternity.
Jessie’s brother, Daniel, was dead because of me, as well. He’d murdered Colette, my great grandmother’s sister. And Jessie had felt the pain of her loss for decades. Daniel had also wanted me dead, but Jessie had stopped him before he could end my life for a second time.
And then there was Jessie’s grandfather. I’d stake him after he’d kidnapped a couple of my friends and was draining them of their blood. He’d also turned everyone in his family into members of the undead just so his bloodline would last forever. He was the worst psychopath of them all. When it came to ending his eternity, I didn’t hesitate.
All three of them brought about their own deaths by acting like psychopaths. But that didn’t matter in the eyes of the Bishops. They had been members of the undead, and, at the time, I was a mortal. Now Jessie was suffering because of me.
I wished that I could go back in time. I wished that Blossom and I had never snuck into the Vanderlind Castle to crash a party. I would know nothing of the undead. I would still be attending high school in Tiburon, Ohio, believing that vampires were only a myth, or the sexy villains in gothic novels.
But how could I wish that I’d never met Jessie? He was the love of my life. He was my soulmate. And if Jessie had never met me, then he would still be wandering the planet, haunted by the memory of Colette. He would have spent eternity mourning her loss. What I really wished was that other vampires weren’t such jerks. It was like all the sociopaths of society had found a way to live forever.
After what felt like several hours, I heard two pairs of footsteps approaching, echoing off the walls of my basement cell. One was the heavy pace of a mortal guard, but the other was quick and light.
Alice appeared outside my cell, the guard trailing after her. “Hello, Aurora,” she said, her eyes taking in the cot and sink, but not looking in my direction.
“Alice,” I exclaimed.
I guess I’d assumed that she’d been arrested, too. Or that she was hiding out under a bridge or in some graveyard mausoleum. But she was standing in front of my cell door, dressed in expensive-looking silk pants and a crepe blouse. She gave the guard an expectant look. He shook his still masked head. “I can’t let her out.”
Alice was undeterred. “Do you expect us to have a private conversation with silver bars between us?”
Reluctantly, the guard pulled out his keys. “You can go in.”
Alice entered the cell regally, like a queen attending her own coronation. She even gave the guard a small nod, honoring him with a token of recognition. Once the door was locked behind her and the guard had walked away, I sprang across the cell and wrapped my arms around her. My maker tried to pull away, but it was too late; I was hugging her for all I was worth. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” I did my best not to sob. “I didn’t know if they caught you, too. They took Jessie; I don’t know where. Things have just been so horrible.”
I choked back the tears that were filling my eyes. For the briefest of moments, Alice returned my hug. But then she stiffened and pulled away. “Yes, things did not go well at the party. But I was able to elude capture.”
I immediately felt embarrassed for hugging my maker. She hated me; I knew that. But it didn’t keep me from feeling the way I felt. Her blood had given me my life. I was connected to her, almost like she was my mother.
“Have you seen Jessie?” I asked. “He got hurt and I’ve been worried about him.”
Alice shook her head. “You, they’ll let me see, but my son is off limits.”
“Lord Vagnar helped us escape, but then he helped the guards capture us. But that might have just been a cover so that he could get us into the Bishop’s jail and not be captured by Armin’s paid mercenaries again.” The words came tumbling out of my mouth. “He keeps helping us and then betraying us. I don’t understand him at all.”
“Lord Vagnar has been alive too long,” Alice said. “He’s run out of ways to keep himself amused. He should have never been made a member of the undead; he’s not well-suited for eternity.”
“Okay, so you don’t know what happened to Jessie,” I said. “Did you find out anything at all?”
Alice gave me a cold look. “I discovered who is pulling the strings, as far as the persecution of my son.”
I nodded, “Armin Adami, Viktor’s brother.”
Alice shook her head. “No. It’s Benjamin Whitright. Who told you it was Armin Adami?”
“Vagnar, for the most part.”
“And how would Lord Vagnar know?”
“Those mortal guards who grabbed us brought him up first. Armin was paying them to lock us in a coffin.”
“Was?”
“Lord Vagnar offered the mortals a lot more money to let us be arrested by the Bishops, instead of being locked in a coffin again.”
My maker slumped imperceptibly. “You would have been safer in a coffin.”
It felt like bile was rising in my throat. “What do you mean?”
“If Lord Vagnar’s information is correct, then there are two vampires with vendettas against our family.”
“Who’s Benjamin Whitright?”
Alice carefully turned her eyes away from me. “My father’s oldest friend.”
“Why would your father’s oldest friend want Jessie arrested?” It made no sense. “You’d think he’d want to protect the Vanderlind family.”
Alice closed her eyes for a moment and massaged the bridge of her nose. “There’s more to it than that. Whitright believes that Jessie murdered his grandfather.”
“But I did that,” I blurted. “And I’d do it again, if I had to. He was acting like a mad dog, snatching teenagers off the streets.”
“Yes, but that’s not what we told the Bishops. We said it was Jessie. So now Whitright wants to punish him. And me. And you.”
“For killing a killer?”
“For killing a well-respected vampire,” she corrected me.
It was so overwrought. Vampires seemed to have more vendettas than the mafia. “I thought you said this was about a money grab.”
Alice shrugged her slender shoulders. “Can’t it be both?”
“Who is Whitright?” I pressed. “Besides being your father’s BFF. I mean, is it really that big of a deal that he’s after us, too?”
“It wouldn’t be,” Alice told me, “except for the fact that he is a respected judge in the Bishop’s court and that he’s greased enough palms to make sure that he presides over your trial.”
Tears burst from my eyes before I even knew what was happening. “So, that’s it, then. We’re as good as dead. This Whitright jerk is going to rule against us, no matter what.”
“We’ll still try to fight,” Alice said in a voice that was quiet, yet determined.
“What can we do?” I asked, smearing my tears across my cheek with the back
of my hand.
“Karl will help us. But besides him, I’m afraid we don’t have too many allies. People are afraid of angering Judge Whitright. They don’t want to be next on the chopping block.”
“I won’t let them hurt Jessie,” I said in a ragged voice. “They can torture and kill me, but I won’t let them touch him.”
Alice coolly folded her arms. “And just how do you intend to stop them?”
I stared back at her, a fiery determination burning in my belly. “By telling them the truth.”
Chapter 11
I spent the day alone in my cell with nothing to distract me from thinking about Jessie for even one moment. I was still dressed in emerald, but I forced myself to use the sink and try to tame my hair. I knew I’d feel more confident for whatever I had to face if I didn’t look a complete fright. As the hours stretched on, I began to realize that the pain in my heart was extending down to my belly. I was starving.
It seemed inhumane that prisoners would be locked up with nothing to sustain them. And the fact that the guards were all mortal made it even worse. I could distinctly smell the musk of each guard as they made their rounds. I needed to be fed, but I didn’t know what to say. Wouldn’t asking a guard for a bottle of blood be the same as asking a cow for a hamburger?
Sometime after sunset a squadron of masked guards marched up to my cell. They were armed to the teeth, which was a good thing. I was too hungry to be rational.
“Don’t even think about it,” their leader said. He was holding something that looked like an electric cattle prod. At least four of them were. “One false move and we’ll light you up.” He gave the trigger on the prod a little squeeze and a three foot bolt of electricity showed out of the end.
“I won’t,” I told him, although I said it through clenched teeth. I could smell his sweat and it made my mouth water. “Where are you taking me?”
The man’s masked face was a blank, black void so I couldn’t gauge his state of mind when he said, “You’ve got a date with a judge.”
“You’ve got chalk on your shoulder,” I told, gesturing toward his left lapel, where streaks of white clung to his tactical jacket.
Out of reflex, the guard brushed at the fabric a few times, then caught himself. Annoyed, he flung a burlap sack at my face. “Just put that on,” he barked.
I complied.
They marched me through the celled area and then up two flights of stairs. The entire time their leader kept the electric cattle prod sizzling in my ears. It was a good thing, too, because I was painfully hungry, and the guards smelled so delicious.
After guiding me down what I assumed was another hallway, we stopped. One of the guards knocked at a door. We waited.
“Who am I meeting, again?” I ventured, after two or three minutes of just standing there with a hood over my head.
“Judge Whitright,” I was told by one of the men. “He’s supposed to be here.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he’s just enjoying making us wait. You know, to build tension, or something.” It was working. I was so tense that my shoulders were practically in my ears. I had no idea why the senior Vanderlind’s best friend wanted to see me, but I steeled myself for the worst. I could live a thousand years and never forget the scabby ghoul that was Jessie’s grandfather. He was ugly to the core.
Eventually I heard a shuffling sound and then a lock being thrown back. The air pressure shifted as the door was slowly opened, hinges creaking. “Lead her in,” a leathery voice whispered. I felt a shiver run up my spine.
I was shoved forward a few steps.
“That is all,” the voice croaked. “You may leave us now.”
“Do you want me to leave a pair of guards outside the door?” the head guard asked.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Captain” was the raspy reply. “I’ll ring when I’m done, here.”
There was the sound of the guards leaving.
“You may remove your hood now,” the voice told me, once the guards were gone.
With some trepidation, I pulled the burlap sack from my head.
Standing in front of me was a young man in a suit. He was slim, petite, and almost feminine in his beauty. The suit was very conservative, giving him a strange appearance, like he was dressed up in his father’s clothes for a school play. He must have been turned when he was very young, maybe thirteen or fourteen.
“How do you do?” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Judge Benjamin Whitright.”
“Uh… hi,” I stammered. I shook the tips of his fingers with both hands, doing so carefully, so as not to burn him with the silver handcuffs. “I’m Aurora.”
Whitright stared at me for several seconds, his face inscrutable. “I can see the resemblance,” he said. “It’s quite clear. People will always say that somebody looks like somebody else, but in this case it’s true.”
“You mean Colette?” I ventured. According to Jessie and my great grandmother, I could have been her twin.
“No,” he said, without further explanation.
“Okay…” I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do next. “Is there a reason you wanted to see me?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Where are my manners? It’s just I was distracted; the resemblance is uncanny.” He stared at me for a few more seconds. It was rude and made me feel wildly uncomfortable, but I forced myself not to shy away. Instead, I stared back at him in the same appraising manner. His hair was slicked back so it was hard to guess an exact color, but I would have gone with a strawberry blond. His eyes were brown, so I assumed that, had he remained mortal, his hair would have darkened as he aged. But all that was cut short as he appeared to have been turned in the middle of puberty. He’d probably never shaved a day in his life.
“Have a seat,” he finally said, gesturing toward a dark green leather chair. There was only one other chair in the room, where he seated himself. We appeared to be in some type of spartanly furnished office.
Next to his chair, there was one of those rolling carts that hostesses used to serve cocktails in the early sixties. My attention was immediately riveted to the fact that it had a decanter filled with blood. My stomach growled, and I could feel my fangs pressing into my lower lip.
“Would you like a drink?” Whitright asked, noticing my gaze.
“Please,” I croaked, trying not to sound too desperate. As a fledgling, I had no ability to control my appetite.
“My pleasure,” Whitright said with an amiable smile.
I watched his every move as he pulled the stopper from the bottle and filled two glasses. The aroma from the blood filled my nostrils, making my mouth water. I was doing my best not to drool.
“I’m not sure if anyone has told you, but I was good friends with Albert Vanderlind,” Whitright said, lifting a goblet. “The best of friends.”
“Oh?” I grunted, trying to sound neutral. I was starving, but I remembered what Jessie had said about not giving information to anyone.
“Yes,” he replied, his hand tightening around the glass. “I was devastated when he was lost at sea. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he would be tossed overboard simply for sating his appetite with some little cabin boy.”
“The mortals on the boat were probably shocked to discover that vampires existed,” I said in a tight voice, desperately wanting him to lift his hand and offer me the goblet.
“Maybe so, but you’d think that they would naturally recognize him as a superior being.”
My stomach was so empty that it was throbbing. “Do you think a wolf recognizes a human as a superior being?”
This made him chuckle. “I suppose not. I know that cats definitely don’t.” He laughed some more, his hand jerking a little. My eyes were riveted on the blood as it sloshed a little in the glass, the tangy scent of it filling the air.
“If you were a pig, and you knew you were lined up to be slaughtered, wouldn’t you want to kill the farmers?” I asked. “Even though the farmer appeared to be a superior
being.”
“You make a good point,” Whitright said. “I guess I’ve never considered things from the perspective of the pig.”
Saying nothing, I forced my eyes away from the goblet. Whitright obviously meant to torture me or he would have handed over the glass. He had to have known that I was hungry.
“How did you and Mr. Vanderlind know each other?” I asked in an attempt to take control of the conversation.
“We were childhood friends,” Whitright replied. “I was turned quite a few years before him, obviously,” he said with a boyish grin. “But that’s only if you look at it from a mortal perspective.”
I was too new of a vampire to look at anything beyond a mortal perspective. “I’m sorry you lost your friend,” I said in a quiet voice.
He glared at me, eyes blazing. “I was his maker.”
Chapter 12
“His maker?” That surprised me. Jessie had said that Whitright and his grandfather were best friends; not maker and progeny. That was a whole different relationship. But could it be true? I looked him straight in the eye. “Really”
“I should have been,” he said, breaking my stare to look at his shoes. “He must have asked me to turn him at least a hundred times.”
“And you never gave in?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was too young and squeamish for such things. But Albert would have never even known about the existence of the undead, if it wasn’t for me.”
“I don’t think you can hold yourself responsible for…”
“But I am responsible,” Whitright interrupted. “At first, he was simply fascinated by the fact that while he grew older, I stayed trapped in this pubescent state,” he said, half raising his arms and looking down at his immature body. The blood sloshed some more and I dug my nails into the arms of the leather chair. “But somewhere in his twenties, he decided that he’d age long enough and that I should ‘freeze him in time’, as he used to say.”