Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (33 page)

  
Annie
stood and gazed at the Burnett Fountain in Central park and thought
it was so beautiful.
The fountain, s
tanding at
the center of the c
onservatory garden’s south
garden
was a tribute to the author of The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgs
on Burnett. The attractive sculpture
was of a young reclining boy playing a flute
with a girl standing over him holding a bowl, with the bowl being a birdbath. Annie remembered the story of The Secret Garden, and thought that the statues were supposed to be the characters Mary and
Dickon. The place
was beautifully landscaped with benches, green hedges and colorful pink flowers in the background.
The statue was
on the edge of a small concrete pool, with water lilies and reflections of the flowers and greenery in its water.
It was a most contemplative place to be.

  
That’s what Annie was doing, thinking of things in general and her life in particular.
Her being a vampire
was going to take some time to get accust
omed to
.
Time shaped everything like flowing water shaped boulders
, and so she wondered what time had in store for her
.
The seasons of her life were now expanded beyond her imagination.
What on earth was s
he going to do with such a stretch
?
She had retaken control of her fi
nances
. Her daughter Lacey wasn’t exactly happy with her mother r
egaining control of her bank account
because
she had plans for that money
, but those were the breaks.
Her daughter was a
retired
doctor and didn’t need her money
she simply wanted it. Greed was an affliction that mankind could have done without.
Annie
didn’t need to be taken care of any longer
. Unfortunately all of her
friends were dead and gone.
Her only child never produced any grandchildren.
Her husband of fifty years was long gone as well.
She wasn’t exactly sure what to do with herself. She had moved out of the home into an apartment, that place was no longer the proper atmosphere for her.

    “Oh, you cute little darlings.” Annie observed the chickadees bathe in the bowl and then fly off in search of food no doubt.
She sat on a bench and watched the people go by, paying specific attention to all the vampires. It seemed to her that one out of every fifty or so was a vampire, and
that
was surprising,
she hadn’t thought that there were that many of them around
,
although it was said that t
here were more
in New York than any place else
. She could enter and read the minds of the vampires but not the humans. It was strange not thinking of herself as human anymore, but the things that she could now
accomplish was a great reminder.
Annie had held her bed up with one hand that morning as she had swept under it.

   
She considered
again
that being a vampire gave
her new lease on life, but
how she was going to
occupy her time
.
It repeated itself over and over.
Maybe she had not thought this vampire thing through well enough.
What if she lived another hundred years? What if she lived another
thousand? Annie could not wrap her mind around that as it was unfathomable.
B
oredom may turn out to be her biggest problem.
She knew that some vampires were over a thousand years old. What they must have experienced in their lifetimes and who they could have met was almost beyond comprehension.
They could have
been present at the building of
the Great Wall of China
, and perhaps even helped build it
.
They could have been there when construction began on the Leaning Tower of Pisa on
that August morning in
1173. That was a peculiar fact to remember, another side effect of being a vampire no doubt, although she could not remember where she had read it, or if it was indeed a fact.
She might have the strength to straighten that thing up, although such force might actually knock it down.

    Annie
watched
a blue jay taking a quick bath in the bowl and thought it must be a popular place for the birds. The jay had only just departed when a black bird flew into it
. How wonderful must it be to take flight like a bird? Good God could she or could she not turn into a bat?
Preoccupied with so many other things she hadn’t considered it until just now.
She must be able to as all vampires could. She assumed that it would be instinct but she didn’t know how to do it, and she definitely wanted to experience flying. She flapped her arms and concentrated but nothing happened.
There must be some trick to it.
Was it something that could only be accomplished after the sun went down?

    A young man passed holding a soccer ball
and stopped briefly to stare at Annie. “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when you’re going to run into a nut.” With that he continued on his way.

   
Annie would have to figure out the bat thing later, too many
nosy
people around.
She
considered that she was old and young at the same time.
Being a vampire hadn’t done much for
her looks, tightened up a few wrinkles but that’s about it.
She continued to look like a ninety-year-old and yet she was a brand new vampire; she shook her head at the thought of it.
Her mind was so full of wonder that some of it was spilling out.
She had already figured out a few things; she knew how to purchase blood for her personal
consumption, which tasted better than anything she had ever savoured.
That taste was unbelievable. It would be impossible to describe it to a human no matter how hard she tried. One had to be a vampire to appreciate it.

    Annie was overwhelmed in a sense with too much information to process.

  
She could
now
defend the helpless
instead of being one of them
, which was more satisfying than she would have ever believed.
She had met Dracula in person and wh
at a handsome fellow he was. Annie
wondered if the king of vampires was attached.
Of course she wasn’t good enough in the department of looks to snatch such a handsome fella. In that department she’d be on one of the back shelves
covered in dust
.

   
Her mind was higgledy-piggle
dy.

    Annie
could go back to nursing but somehow that didn’t appeal to her.

    A young man in shabby clothes
with hair like Mr. T and an actual bone
through his nose took notice of Annie and her red purse.
He was laughable but with some effort she managed to control herself.
Who knows what the poor fellow had gone through in his life?
He sat on the middle bench as Annie was on the bench to his left
. Although the old woman couldn’t read his mind she was getting weird vibes from him, it was only a guess but she figured that he was up to no good. In fact Eric needed a fix and would do pretty much anything to get the money to satisfy his hunger for heroin.
He had almost killed a senior a week ago
for his wallet
and he remained in the hospital broken and battered
.
Annie looked him up and down as he looked the other way to show
his disinterest in her and she smiled at that. When she looked the othe
r way he stared at her purse as
he n
ervously shook his right leg
he waited for what he considered the proper moment to attack.
He would grab the frail old woman’s purse and be off.
That was the thing with seniors, they were easily manhandled.

    Annie thought that she could adorn herself with a red cape and become
Super Senior
; she laughed out loud at the thought of it. “What a silly thought.”
Her brain continued to get accustomed to her new condition.

     A chickadee landed on Annie’s left shoulder and she remained perfectly sti
ll as she thought it was adorable
, but that was when Eric attacked. He grabbed her purse and made a run for it, but he ended up on his back on the ground as she wouldn’t let go.
It was like trying to steal a purse from a tank.
Annie let him punch her in the face and it was like hitting a boulder.
She picked him up as someone would a football and kicked him over the hedg
e
. Then she stood on the bench and watched as he limped away, barely able to walk. Perhaps she had broken something in his heroin contaminated body, but if she did it was good enough for him.
The moment she had touched him she discovered that she could in fact read his mind, but because he was human she had to be touching him.
Was it some sort of strange vampire rule?
Eric was a nasty piece of work and had hurt dozens over the years, some seriously.
The way his mind worked was quite confusing to the old woman.

    Annie heard an awful scream
, turning her head
and
trying
to orient on it;
she took off like a bolt of lightning.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

  
S
ITTING
OUTSIDE AT ONE OF THE
tables under the red Cornelia Street Café sign
with white lettering
,
Lauren
waited for Michael to show up.
She was impatient and couldn’t wait to grab
onto him and maybe never let
go.
After being apart from him she was hoping that they could take their relationship to another level. He had a particular pleasant scent and she wanted to lock onto it again.
Although s
he continued to be affected by almost
dying in that awful coffin,
she had sur
vived
and it was time to get beyond it.