Carol wanted to tell them that even if he stopped hating her she’d stay withdrawn. She felt safe and comfortable where she was, and she’d never trust him again.
“Chloe’s right,” Jeanette said. “Julien, you know what’s going on, tell him.”
Julien’s voice was warm and rich, a complete contrast to the way he looked. He was also the opposite of Jeanette. Carol had wondered how the two of them could be together, they were so different. He, too, spoke in English, presumably so that she would understand.
“As we discussed last night, I believe you capable of a variety of emotions, each intense and perhaps many volatile. You know some of my history and may realize the extent to which I comprehend your situation. If you have felt l’amour for this one,
I suggest you either resurrect it or accept the loss of the offspring. In my experience, where hate and power rule, there love is lacking. But the results of hate and power are identical; the soul dies. L’âme se meurt.”
Carol didn’t know why but if she were going to trust any of these vampires—and she now believed that’s just what they were—he would be the one. He spoke from a deeper place than the others. And although she didn’t understand what he meant, she instinctively felt his integrity.
The room became silent. Finally André said, “I want to go out. Will somebody come along and stay with her for a while?”
“I’ll come,” Karl said.
Carol felt a tug on the rope around her waist. Then she felt herself lifted. “Bring a blanket,” André called over her head.
Soon she was in the car, between the two of them. On the drive into town they spoke together in French. She slept and woke in fits and starts. Karl stayed with her while André went to the docks. When he returned Karl got out of the car.
“Don’t wait for me. I’ll be down here for a while. Send Gerlinde to meet me at le Caveau,” he said, then closed the door.
On the return trip to the château André mostly ignored her. But twice he touched her hair and face. Both times a chill passed through her, a chill of terror.
For the next six weeks André stayed tied to her, taking her with him from room to room, place to place. Occasionally one of the others would fill in, but the job was definitely his. Many nights they just lay together in her bed or on a couch where he read or listened to music or wrote reams of what looked like poetry, balling up nineteen out of every twenty sheets of paper in frustration, throwing the failed attempts into the trash and binding the few that he kept in a large cloth book. They watched TV like a regular couple, Carol propped up against him, a life-sized rag doll, wrapped warmly in blankets. During the day he took her to his bed below the house and she lay next to him in complete blackness while he slept.
His room was odd. It was dark most of the time, although occasionally he lit a fire. She never really got a very good look around, but what she did see was intriguing. The place had an art deco feel, silver, black, grey, with chevrons along the walls and angled furniture. The headboard of the bed was black lacquered wood with inlaid silver. Above it hung an Edward Gorey sketch, black and white on grey, of a large dark-winged creature with enormous teeth flying through the night carrying in its arms a big-eyed pale humanoid of indistinguishable gender. The drop of red at the victim’s throat was the only color in the sketch, or in the room. There were also two couches, tables, books, music, a large fireplace, everything except windows. Sometimes he lit a hurricane lamp, although she knew the place had electricity because he’d turned the lights on once. But most often he brought her down just at dawn, when he was ready to sleep.
Out of boredom she’d begun walking again, and eating of her own volition. She read books, watched movies, did everything but speak. She refused to communicate verbally with any of them. It was her last stronghold against what she now realized to be the truth—they were all monsters, undead creatures that lived off people like her.
But they continued to talk to her. Even André was starting to converse with her again, although there was an edge to his voice. He also resumed having sex with her. He was not particularly gentle and certainly not romantic, but at least he wasn’t brutal. He made efforts to stimulate her so that most of the time what he did didn’t hurt. Often he entered her vagina from behind. She was never sure if he thought it was more comfortable for her, if he was trying to humiliate her or if he just couldn’t stand to see her face. She never complained but she never let herself enjoy it either. She refused to actively participate.
In her seventh month Carol came down with a fever. It hit without warning. She was in the limo alone with Gerlinde, who was listening to music on a Walkman.
Suddenly Carol felt chilly. Her teeth began to click together and her body shook. Gerlinde looked at her.
Carol watched Gerlinde’s face change shape. She started to resemble a brown bear, and then her features re-formed into the way she normally looked. Carol’s flesh became burning hot, her lips parched, sweat pouring down her face.
“Hey, kiddo, you’re not ill, are you?” Gerlinde asked, her voice worried. “Here, lie down.” She moved over and made Carol recline, taking her head onto her lap. There was a blanket in the car and Gerlinde covered her with it and with her own coat. But Carol was cold again, cold into the bone, and shivering.
The door opened and André got in. “What’s up?”
“She’s sick. A fever and chills.” André took off his coat too and put it over her, but now Carol was hot again, burning, hallucinating.
“Momma, please let me stay home from school today. I don’t feel well,” she said in a little girl’s voice.
The car was driving along the highway at a fast clip. She looked around, unsure of where she was. “Can I have some water?”
André poured some from the tap in the mini bar into a plastic cup. Gerlinde held her head up while she took a sip.
“I’m so hot,” Carol said, trying to brush the coats off.
“Leave them on.” André held his hand on top so she couldn’t remove them.
“What a mess,” Gerlinde groaned. “Just when she was coming out of it. Why do mortals have to get sick all the time? You’d better call home.”
“Rob?” Carol said. She watched him pick up the phone. He turned his blond head and gave her that brilliant smile. She started to cry. “I didn’t know you were dead. Phillip told me. Why didn’t you tell me? You never said goodbye!”
She hyperventilated. Suddenly she shivered. “Cold. I’m so cold.”
André punched a couple of numbers into the phone. “Carol’s sick. I don’t know, a fever. High, I think. Get the doctor out. We’ll be back in five minutes.”
She was carried up to her room. They piled five blankets on top of her, although the house was warm. Someone made a fire.
Carol was only vaguely aware of what was going on. She kept flipping from the present to the past, from burning hot to freezing cold. Hands touched her and voices surrounded her. She remembered seeing the doctor at one point.
“The baby’s not going to live,” Carol told him.
“Do not worry, Mademoiselle. Lie quietly and relax. I am giving you this to bring the fever down.”
“My baby’s dead. You’re not telling me, but I know. It’s so hot in here. Open the windows. Please!”
The fever lasted all night. They plied her with liquids, most of which she threw up. They kept her covered with blankets, even though the sheets were drenched with sweat.
“Help me!” she cried when she was cold. “I’m freezing to death. My bones are cold and I can’t get warm.”
When dawn broke, André took her downstairs with him. He plugged in a small room heater and built a fire in the fireplace.
Carol was convinced she wouldn’t last the day. She knew the fever was higher than before, her spans of being clear mentally grew increasingly shorter. She saw the end of her life rushing towards her, a life that had not been a happy one.
She looked at André who was lying beside her not sleeping.
The back of his forearm rested across his eyes.
“Kill me,” she whispered. He lifted his arm and turned his head. “I’m dying anyway. Just this once do something for me.”
He looked startled. “You’re not going to die. You’ll be okay tomorrow.” But he sounded unnerved.
“Then make love to me and let me die that way. You’ve made love to me before, I remember. Just love me this once because no one ever has and I know you don’t but I want to believe it. I want to die believing that someone cares for me.”
“You’re hallucinating.” He seemed stunned.
“Make love to me as if you love me.”
He hesitated but then moved the blankets away from her body. She shivered with cold. “This isn’t a good idea...” he began.
A strangling sound came out of her mouth and she grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip. Her eyes burned feverishly, her brain was on fire and she felt crazy.
He touched her body, slick with sweat, and lay on top of her, perhaps as much to warm her as for any other reason. His movements were sluggish, his limbs seemed stiff. He kissed her lips, her hair, the sides of her face and her nipples where the sweat ran in large drops. Slowly he caressed her, penetrating her. She laughed and cried and most of the time didn’t even know he was there but talked to the ghosts from her past, telling them all her secrets, the feelings she’d stored up and had never been able to convey.
She wove in and out of reality. But when she was there, with him, a bitter-sweet awareness of him trying to love her stabbed at her heart. She sobbed uncontrollably; her barren life stretched out before her like a vast unforgiving desert she had wandered. And that arid heat only served to burn away all her illusions.
He wrapped her again in the blankets and held her close all day, she deathly weak, he immobile as a corpse.
Chapter Seventeen
The fever broke. The next evening Carol felt weak but alive. The level of tension in the house dropped.
“Kiddo, for a while there I thought you were a goner,” Gerlinde laughed, tucking a blanket around Carol, who was propped on the longest couch. “Welcome back to the land of the living, or a reasonable facsimile.”
“It’s good to be back,” Carol said. “I feel exhausted but okay.”
“Well, you’ll still need to take care of yourself. We don’t want a recurrence,” Chloe said.
“God no!” Jeanette agreed. “We’d run out of ideas.” She stood next to Julien, an arm draped over his shoulders. He held her around the waist.
Everyone was happy, excited, glad Carol had recovered. They crowded around her, all except André, who hung back. He said almost nothing. The look on his face was peculiar. Soon he left the room and she heard the car pull away.
“Well, you’re into the eighth month now,” Jeanette said. “All this will be over for you soon. You must be glad.”
Carol had thought about this all through her withdrawn state and into her illness. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to break it to them. “I want to keep the baby.”
Silence filled the room.
“I know this is awkward, but it’s mine. I’ll stay here, if you like, or go away. But I want the baby.”
Chloe sat down and looked at her.
Gerlinde whistled. “Never a dull moment here at Hotel Transylvania.”
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Jeanette said. “You’re probably still a little feverish.”
“She understands perfectly.” Julien stared at Carol with those same frightening eyes. But Carol thought she detected something else in them, something that may not have been approval but wasn’t rejection.
“Carol, that’s impossible.” Chloe interrupted her thoughts.
“We’ve explained why the baby must grow up with us,” Karl said.
“And,” Chloe added, “your influence would only distort things. It would be torture for the child, being torn in two directions. It will be difficult enough for him or her to decide which path to take. Ours is superior and we want to encourage that. You’re just experiencing natural maternal feelings, but they’ll pass.”
“No, they won’t!” Carol said adamantly. “I didn’t just decide this tonight, I’ve been thinking about it for months. I won’t part with my baby. There’s nothing you can do to make me.”
Everyone fell silent again, apparently unable to think of anything else to say, except for Gerlinde. “I’ll break out the plasma.”
When André returned, Chloe took him aside and told him the news. He wasn’t nearly as surprised as the others nor, oddly enough, as negative.
“There’s only one way,” he told Carol, “and I don’t even know if I’m for it. You’ll have to become like us.”
“Become a vampire?”
“I wish you wouldn’t use that word,” Gerlinde said. “It gives me the creeps.”
“The process is relatively painless, at least for you,” André said.
“But I don’t want that. I want to be the way I am and raise my child to be human.”
“Out of the question!” Karl said.
“Think about it,” André told her. “You’ve got time. We’ve all got time to decide. It’s the only way.”
Carol noticed Julien watching the scene from a removed but interested position. Their eyes met. She had the feeling he saw something that no one else in the room did, including her.
Throughout her eighth month and into her ninth, the physical discomfort became incredible. Carol found she couldn’t sit or stand for long periods and felt constantly restless. Her back ached continually.
She rarely left the house now except for a daily walk along the beach. Because she was so uncomfortable, she spent days in her room rather than with André, so that she could move around. During the evening hours she was either downstairs with the others or alone with him.
Their sex life had discontinued; no position was comfortable and Chloe voiced fears that the baby might be injured. But they had plenty of physical contact and talked a lot, more than before. Some change had come over him, something inexplicable, and Carol had no idea what it was. He was kind to her, which was all she cared about. He did everything he could for her, little things like backrubs and holding her and generally exhibiting a caring when he talked to her that she hadn’t experienced from him before. He was as protective and concerned for her welfare now as he had once been threatening. Carol would never have called what was between them love, at least from her end. But she had to admit to herself that a certain closeness had developed and she was starting to see him in a fuller light, despite the fact that she now understood that he was something entirely different from her. He was showing her more than his defensiveness.
But the nearer Carol got to the delivery, the more worried she became. “What if the baby comes in the day, when I’m alone?”
“The labor will be at least twelve hours. We’ll call the doctor to be with you if we can’t be,” Chloe reassured her.
“But what if something happens? Complications.”
“I have a strong sense everything will be all right,” Jeanette said. “You’ve gone through the worst of it. You’re strong and this is, after all, just a baby. Our cells are different than yours, but there are similarities too. You’re not delivering an ogre.”
Carol went into labor at six o’clock on New Year’s Eve. The women stayed with her throughout the night and the men were nearby. André was more nervous than she would have expected. He popped in and out of the room constantly, agitated, excited.
“Daddy of Darkness,” Gerlinde kept calling him, making Carol laugh during the contractions.
The pain was more extreme than anything she had known, excruciating in fact. Chloe had taught her how to breathe through it but she needed constant coaching because she had a tendency to hold her breath when it got bad. She found she couldn’t lie down much but preferred to either be on her knees or squat with the help of two of them holding her up.
“That’s the way we did it in m
y day,” Chloe said, lifting Carol up into a squat.
Carol groaned out the words, “When was your day?”
“The early nineteenth century. I was born here in Bordeaux in 1803.”
“Did you have any children?” Tears and sweat dripped off Carol’s face and Jeanette wiped the moisture away.
“Yes, ten.”
“Ten? You went through this ten times?”
“I went through it twelve times but two of my babies were still-born.”
“And the others?” Carol gasped.
Someone said, “Breathe,” and she began panting.
“The others lived their lives, some brief, some long, and then died.”
“What about your husband?”
“He died too.”
Jeanette massaged Carol’s lower back but she could barely feel it. Contractions hit about thirty minutes apart.
“Kiddo, I don’t know how to break it to you, but we have to go now. The sun’s coming up,” Gerlinde said, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to leave? All of you? You can’t leave me!”
“The doctor’s downstairs, he’ll be with you throughout the delivery,” Jeanette said. “If you want, maybe Julien will stay too. He’s the only one of us who can tolerate being awake in the day. Do you want me to ask him?”
“Please!” Carol said. Things had been going okay because she didn’t feel alone. Panic set in.
“In this warmer is a bottle of blood,” Chloe instructed. “It’s at body temperature. If the baby comes before sunset, feed some of this to him or her. Don’t worry, there shouldn’t be any problems with digestion. Just make sure you don’t give the child any of the colostrum from your body.”
Carol nodded that she understood.
One by one they left her. “Chin up, kiddo. This’ll be over before you know it and then you’ll have a squalling baby bloodsucker to deal with.” Gerlinde kissed her and Carol laughed.
“Remember, feed the child only blood,” Karl reminded her.
He touched her face gently.
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