Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (12 page)

“Going a little fast, sir,” he finally said. “Something wrong?”

Michael looked at the burns on his wrists, the bloodless slices on his arms. “Yeah,” he said. “I need an ambulance.”

And then he slumped forward, over the steering wheel. The cop let out a squawk of alarm and got on his radio. I
reached out to ease Michael back. His eyes were shut, but as I stared at him, he murmured, “You wanted five minutes.”

“I wasn't looking for a Best Supporting Actor award!” I muttered back.

Michael did his best impression of Vampire in a Coma for about five minutes, and then came to and assured the cop and arriving ambulance attendants he was okay.

Then he told them about my dad.

They found Jerome, still and evermore dead, with a silver-tipped arrow through his head. They found a copy of
The Wizard of Oz
next to him.

There was no sign of Frank Collins.

Later that night—around midnight—Michael and I sat outside on the steps of our house. I had a bottle of most illegal beer; he was guzzling his sixth bottle of blood, which I pretended not to notice. He had his arm around Eve, who had been pelting us both with questions all night in a non-stop machine gun patter; she'd finally run down, and leaned against Michael with sleepy contentment.

Well, she hadn't
quite
run down. “Hey,” she said, and looked up at Michael with big, dark-rimmed eyes. “Seriously. You can bring back dead guys with
vampire juice
? That is so wrong.”

Michael almost spit out the blood he was swallowing. “
Vampire juice
? Damn, Eve. Thanks for your concern.”

She lost her smile. “If I didn't laugh, I'd scream.”

He hugged her. “I know. But it's over.”

Next to me, Claire had been quiet all night. She wasn't drinking—not that we'd have let her, at sixteen—and she
wasn't saying much, either. She also wasn't looking at me. She was staring out at the Morganville night.

“He's coming back,” she finally said. “Your dad's not going to give it up, is he?”

I exchanged a look with Michael. “No,” I said. “Probably not. But it'll be a while before he gets his act together again. He expected to have me to help him kick off his war, and like he said, his time was running out. He'll need a brand-new plan.”

Claire sighed and linked her arm through mine. “He'll find one.”

“He'll have to do it without me.” I kissed the soft, warm top of her hair.

“I'm glad,” she said. “You deserve better.”

“News flash,” I said. “I've
got
better. Right here.”

Michael and I clinked glasses, and toasted our survival.

However long it lasted.

 

 

 

 

T
he moment I saw him I knew. I suppose any one of us would, by now. We're so used, via movie and novel, to the nature and ways of The Vampire (capital letters intended), we can—or ought to—spot one at two hundred paces. And go grab ourselves a sharpened stake—

Or, of course, not. . . .

I had been sent, that is
persuaded
, to attend the October Ball at the Reconstruct Mansion, by my father, Anthony. He said, and here I quote: “You'll find it interesting, I think.”

“Why?” I had demanded. For this wasn't how I wished to spend the first five days of the month.

“Because the world is full of people like the Kokersons. If you like, Lel, put this down as the final part of your education. You'll learn how such people tick.”

“Tick in the sense,” I said, “of clock or bomb?”

“Either,” replied my elegant, lovely, and infuriating father.

October is fall. Time of flaming,
fall
ing leaves, of mists and dreams, before Halloween and winter close in. I'd had my own plans, but there you go. Dad knows it all. (The trouble is, as far as I can tell, he usually does.)

And so I accepted the Kokerson invite and packed my bags and caught the train to Chakhatti Halt, and then took a cab driven by a very sweet guy, who looked and spoke just like a really jolly Tyrannosaurus Rex (I do not lie) in (quasi-) human form.

I call the castle Reconstruct Mansion, did so from the very start, the moment I read in a newspaper that they had imported the edifice, once a huge old castle-type house from someplace in Eastern Europe, and were having it rebuilt stone by stone, in a vast parkland some other place, well outside the small town of Chakhatti. The Kokersons, obviously, are very rich. One of them won a lottery about twenty years back. I had seen photos of them. I really didn't want to go. But go there, Anthony thought I must.

In case this makes my dad sound like a manipulative monster I have to state right here and now that is the very opposite of what he is. As I said, it's just—he seems to know about . . . everything. But then, that's how he is.

My name is Lelystra. It's a family name, only usually I have myself called Lel by those who are my friends. Call me Lel, all right?

“Oh! You should have called—we would have sent a car! And you are Lelystra? What a delicious name! Oh, we wouldn't
dream
of mangling it down to
Lel
!!!”

So they greeted me, the Kokersons. A never-ending family, only lacking a father (had he run away? I might have). Toothy, bronzed sons and toothy, bleached daughters, and boisterous aunts, and an uncle like a dark satanic Bill (his name), and the mother, Mrs. Kokerson, or Ariadne, as I was told to call her. She was sixty going on fifteen. That is, she was sixty, but had somehow stayed fifteen in all the
wrong
ways. I felt an immediate requirement to look after her, steer her away from the cocktails—she was
much
too young to even taste one—and perhaps introduce her to some youth-fully elderly male.

I flew upstairs with wings of worry on my feet and leapt into the cover of a bright white bedroom, with a bed the size of a softball field.

I tried to put through a call to Anthony. Cunningly he was in a meeting. I left a message. “Dad, I am going to kill you.”

Let me describe the reconstruct castle.

An apparent ascending thousand feet of coal-blue stone, with towers, cupolas, balconies, verandas, staircases inside
and out like static stepped waterfalls, and some of them just as slippery. The window glass is lightly polarized. From outside the windows look like smoky eyeglasses. Inside they color day sky green, and night sky purple, with pink stars. The landscape all around is private and full of trees, lake, and deer. October stags bellowed from the woods all night, waking me regular as a fire alarm roughly every thirty minutes.

It was all a gigantic theme park.

The
theme
, presumably, was the Kokersons, or their fantasy about themselves. The feel of fake antiquity and illusory age was so intense it was quite serious.

And we all had to dress in the clothes they provided, females in flowing gowns, males in gothic tailoring, nothing later than 1880, or earlier than 1694. We were like refugees from a muddled movie set. Even the house was like that.

Two days, two bellowing nights passed.

The day of the ball, everyone (or the Young People, at least) spent all morning and afternoon compulsorily in hot tubs, being massaged, creamed, pedicure-manicured, topped off by shampoo and styling (as if for a cat show). Then came the dressing up in the most extreme clothes yet.

I yawned and yawned, blaming it on the wake-up calls of the noisy stags.

My dress, which Ariadne had chosen me, was white. (Ariadne: “So perfect with your lovely pale hair.”) My hair
is natural, but somehow the hairdresser had gotten it to go even paler—scared it, maybe. My skin is white too. I like the sun but never take a tan. In the white dress I vanished without meaning to, became a sort of plaster statue figure lacking any features, apart from my eyes which, thank the Lord, are very dark gray.

I thought,
I shall attend, play their silly game, dance a few of the minuets and waltzes
(anything modern was absolutely out)
, and retire graciously soon as I can, later saying I was still there all the while
. I'm good at that sort of thing.

Either that is selfishly self-protective, or my kinder side not wanting to offend or hurt. I have no idea which and I don't care. It works. I escape, others aren't upset.

So I descended the indoor glass-slippery, glass-slipper stair, and entered the ballroom (like the outside of a bridal cake, icing sugar and gilding, with grapevines of chandeliers). I glanced around.

And that was when I saw him. And knew him. Or rather, knew what he
was
.

And all along my spine, rising upward, ran the kind of prickly electricity that on a cat reveals itself as the fur standing on end.

Ariadne sailed by, right on cue.

Me, casually: “Who is that? I
do
like his costume.”

“Yes, isn't it glorious? But I'm sure you notice that he's
very
handsome too,” she enthused at me.

I answered calmly. “Yes. Quite a good face.”

“And
perfect
masculine physique. Strong, like a dancer's. And his hair—”

“Is it really so long or is that a piece?”

“No. It's all his own. It's only that usually Anghel ties it back. How romantic he looks, doesn't he? I'm not surprised you'd pick him out. But I have to warn you, Lelystra, he's cold as snow. Cold as—” She fought for an even more cryogenic noun.

“As very
cold
snow?” I helpfully suggested.

“Well, er, yes. The
coldest
of cold snow. We're all quite crazy over him, and my two daughters are besotted, but he's only ever polite. But then, Anghel has escorted
movie stars
. Always in demand. He only arrived an hour ago.”

“Really.”

“He's been offered parts himself in so many movies—”

“But always coldly and politely refused,” I supplied. I tried to keep all trace of irritation from my voice.
Obviously
he wouldn't take a part in any film. You only had to look at him to see it—this one would never be up at the crack of dawn and out on location in the blazing sun.

He was A Vampire.

Someone called Ariadne then, and she floated off on a sea of people dancing polkas.

Anghel (a name to conjure with) might be any age from twenty to six hundred. Or more. He looked about twenty-two. His hair was black as if he had washed it in the night outside. His eyes were blacker. He was pale, paler no doubt than I was. It wasn't any kind of make-up. He had a handsome—no, a beautiful—and cruel face. It was his mask, evidently, to keep all of us just far enough away—or if near then suitably nervous and/or impressed—while he chose his
victim for that night, maybe for the weekend. It wouldn't be more, because also evidently he hadn't
killed
anyone by drinking their blood. His dates might keep quiet, or be made to “forget” what had gone on, but surely word would have gotten around if none of them ever went home. His quaint costume was that of some European nobleman of the eighteenth century. All black, need I add, and embroidered, the tall black boots flittering with quills of steel and his coat with wild lace cuffs of sheerest snow white (to match his manner, perhaps).