Eternal (5 page)

My wrists are bruised as if I’ve given blood or had a transfusion or been restrained. Or all three.

I’ve gone crazy. It’s the only explanation. This is no average storefront shrink. My parents have sent me to the Club Med of insane asylums. “I’m . . . Who are you?”

“My name is Archibald Mosby Radford, originally of the Virginia Radfords by way of eastern Mississippi, western Oklahoma, and Toronto. According to custom, you’re welcome to call me ‘Master’ or ‘Majesty’ or ‘Father.’ I’d prefer ‘Daddy,’ to tell the truth, but I’m sad to say it’s falling out of favor. There’s no need to fuss. You remember me, sugar. I’m the one who saved you that night in the cemetery.”

I remember the cemetery. I remember the light.

“You’ve got what folks these days are calling ‘post-traumatic stress,’” he adds. “It’s like a hangover from what you were before.”

Before I can process that, a matronly woman in an apron appears outside the open doorway. “Pardon me, sir.”

“Quickly, Nora,” the man spits out. “The medicine is wearing off. What’s the trouble?”

“The aristocracy has gathered outside in the snow beneath the windows,” she replies. “They’re waiting to see her. Harrison is handing out blood by the bucket.”

I’m standing. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t care. I like the feel of the bare wood on my bare feet. I’m naked. I don’t care about that either. I hear the blood slipping through the woman’s body, feeding her heart. It’s quicker now, the heartbeat.

I’m moving fast. I’m not used to this speed. I slide on a round wool rug and miss my target. The woman. Nora. My palms hit the stone wall, my clawlike fingernails break. My head falls forward, and the impact feels like it cracked my skull.

Liquid snakes through my hair and runs down my cheeks. My tongue darts to taste. It’s my blood I’m drinking.

The woman, Nora, she’s filled with more. Only hers is warm.

Why doesn’t she run? Why do I want her to?

I know the answer, and it stops me in place. On some level, I’ve known since I woke up. All those monster movies Lucy made me sit through. My broken nails. The right pinkie nail is curved and an inch long. I feel my fangs with my fingers and puncture the tip of my tongue on each. Blood rises, salty and seductive.

I recall the radiant man . . . last night . . . was it last night? . . . in the cemetery. Why didn’t the butterflies save me?

No, he saved me. The other one. The doctor? The one with me now. That’s what he said.

A delusion — it’s the most reasonable explanation. I’m sick. That’s why I’ve been checked into this mental hospital.

Suddenly, I’m caught, tangled and restrained, in the black sheet.

“That will be all,” the commanding voice says to Nora.

She turns to leave. “Charming child. I look forward to knowing her better.”

Both of their voices carry a trace of the South. Not Texas, but . . .

I force out the questions because I need to hear the answers. “Where am I? What have you done to me?”

“I’ve taken care of you, made sure your elevation was as protected as it could be. Sugar, you’ve been spared the spiraling moods, the paranoia and indignity, the cramps and shooting pain. The erratic and unpredictable behavior. Tonight your month-long transformation is behind us.” He leads me to a window, pulls back the drapes. It’s open, but the icy wind is no bother. “Tonight the world is ours.”

Below, a crowd has gathered in the moonlight. Hundreds of jovial bodies, perhaps as many as a thousand, swirling, bobbing. They’re the dead of winter, and they’re dancing in the falling snow. Wind ravages their flowing hair, tosses up their capes and full-length skirts, spreads their draping sleeves like rodent wings. Against the white of the landscape, they swirl in black and red, in gray and violet.

Surveying the scene, I can almost count their eyelashes, the needles of the evergreens. The revelers sing my name: “Miranda!”

“I’ve turned you into a princess,” he explains, “and you’re a pretty one at that. These folks are our aristocracy. They’ve come together to celebrate.”

A princess. Images from movies and storybooks flit through my mind — ball gowns and poison apples and beauties awakened with a kiss . . . dark magic and evil wizards and knights on white horses, riding to the rescue. I search the crowd below for someone, anyone trying to save me. If only it wasn’t so hard to concentrate. “Thirsty.”

“Let’s do something about that.” He waves, and the crowd shrieks with glee at the sight of us together.

Master, he called himself. Majesty. Father. Still wrapped in the black sheet, I mimic his actions, the royal wave. I know only one word. “Yes.”

Newly appareled in an off-the-shoulder charcoal gown, I twist in the front passenger seat of the black Caddy to study my immense new home. The multilevel white stone building is set deep on the property, far from the road. The red tower roofs look like pointy hats. A red dragon on a black flag ripples in the wind. It’s a castle.

“Fancy, isn’t it?” Father asks from behind the wheel. “We have nine more like it and another being built right now. This here is our U.S. Midwest regional estate. Like all the rest, it’s loosely inspired by Castle Bran in Transylvania (or so I like to tell folks). It’s quite the fortress, too — the back wall is eleven feet thick.”

We wait for the wrought-iron gate to open. It reminds me of the gate at the cemetery, only this one is well oiled and freshly painted black. “What’s that?”

A large canine circles the car. It’s a shepherd — no, a wolf, the size of a Great Dane, his eyes blood bright. They capture and deaden, not that it matters. I’m beyond their power. The wolflike creature bows its head, tucks its tail, and whines.

“Sentry,” Father explains. “We have six prowling the grounds.”

I stretch my arms forward, feeling the power pulse through me. If I wanted to, I could rip this car apart. “They’re like us?”

“No one is like us, sugar plum, but they are eternals.”

Eternals.
The way he says it, it sounds like
gods.

I try to imagine myself changing into the shape of a wolf. It’s such a silly thought. I take another sip from the straw to stop myself from giggling.

On our stroll from my bedroom through the castle to the parking garage, Father offered me a drink from a crystal decanter, and I told him I wasn’t twenty-one. He said that no longer mattered. He reminded me that, in a way, I won’t be getting any older. That’s a silly thought, too.

Faintly, I realize it’s not alcohol that’s making me drunk.

“The castle,” Father continues, “sits at the highest point of Whitby Estates. It’s the most moneyed community on Chicago’s North Shore. Many of our favored aristocracy own and occupy the homes hereabouts.”

In my fuzzy state, it takes me a moment to sift through to the part that makes the least sense. “We’re not in Dallas?”

His smile is toothy. “Sip your blood wine.”

I do. I listen, intent, as Father turns the radio to a country music station and explains my faux pas with Nora, the castle chef. He says there is human property useful for work (as she is) or for companionship and entertainment, like pets. Like my pet gerbil, I think. The rest are merely food.

“We drink their blood,” he adds, steering through the stately neighborhood, “and sometimes toy with their bodies. We don’t eat their flesh, though. That’s the nasty business of shifters.”

My first trip to the city! It’s big; it’s brash. It’s a bloody blur.

Father shows off, taking more than he needs. In the loop de loop (Father says it’s just called the Loop), he tells me that the investment banker tastes of vodka. Later, at the blues club across town, he mocks the fading beat of a drummer’s heart.

Within the next hour, Father drops a drained runaway teenager (her bus ticket read
Iowa City
) into a nearby alley and asks, “Thirsty, sugar?”

I sway, my hands clasped behind my back. It’s all I can do not to drop and suckle from the discarded girl’s wound. “Yes, Father,” I say. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Our next stop is Greek Town, and, shoving a waiter against a brick wall, I hardly glimpse his face. I’m someplace else, diving into dark liquid, luxuriating in an endless sea, warm for the first time tonight. It’s bliss . . . the thick, sweet taste, the scent of blood and lamb and unfamiliar spices.

Teetering on tiptoe, I realize there’s an easier way. I snap the neck for a better angle, and, still nursing the vein, move the waiter into a kneeling position. It’s better,
much
better, yes.

Lapping at a stray trickle, I’m only vaguely aware of Father speaking into his cell phone. He whispers of the victims we’ve left behind.

IT’S BEEN TWELVE AND A HALF MONTHS
since I first awakened in this castle.

I minimize the Eternal News Network (ENN) website on my browser, amused by the streaming coverage of tonight’s event. I’m not nervous, not really.

As early as my first hunt with Father, I’ve made a positive impression. Songs are still sung in praise of that night, odes recited.

It’s true that I was off-balance for a while, struck down by soul sickness — the tedious burdens of guilt and despair — immediately afterward and for the first few months that followed. But, fortunately, that foolishness has faded with time.

I skip to an arched window of the pink-and-black suite, unofficially called the nursery, and wave to subjects arriving via the red carpet. Cameras flash, and jewels sparkle. I’m finally the life of the party. All I had to do was die.

Lucy would say, Enough with the drama queen.

I almost wish she were here. Who better to confide in than my vampire fan girl/best friend? Make that eternal aficionado/most treasured companion.

Did that make sense? I’m not sure, but I’ve been making a determined effort. Father objects to the V-word and insists we speak formally, especially when around company. It’s all about maintaining appearances. I practice constantly, even in my head, so I don’t slip up.

Oh, how Father loves to entertain! For my demonic debut, he’s summoned the glittering, gossipy aristocracy to the castle’s largest, and central, interior courtyard.

The night is lit with torches, punctuated by round tables strung with dewy white lilies and roses. The reflecting pool has been hidden behind shimmering silver curtains.

It’s April first, a fool’s night. No one who matters minds the cold.

The cuisine is nouveau-Romanian-meets-southern-fried. It’s available mostly for the consumption of the decked-out personal assistants (at events like this, they’re as much fashion accessories as they are helpmates).

The majority of our more-honored guests are on an all-liquid diet. For that, humans from the castle’s stock — gagged, blindfolded, and bound — have been affixed to the surrounding white rock walls. Boys and girls, young and tasty, runaways mostly. If they run dry, we have more in the dungeon.