Baka knocked on his cubby door. When the guard opened the latch, he asked, "What's paranormal?"
"Paranormal? You know, supernatural." Then the guard started to laugh. "Like vampire and werewolves for instance."
"Werewolves?" Baka looked confused. "What's romantic about werewolves?"
The guard grew serious. "Yeah. You could also ask anybody in Unit Drac what's romantic about vampire?"
"Unit Drac?"
"Yeah. That's what they call this place. Didn't you know?"
Baka's brows were drawn together. "No. I did not know that."
"Oh, hey, no offense meant. It's kind of a joke."
"Is it?"
"Well, yeah."
"So vampire are not romantic, but we are funny."
"When you put it like that..."
"Never mind. I have a request."
"Okay."
"I want some books, no, some novels that are romance with something paranormal thrown in."
The guard shrugged. "Make a list. Your wish is my command."
Baka turned away muttering to himself. "Sure it is."
He wrote to a couple of book stores and a couple of librarians and asked for recommendations. He asked for a list of best sellers within the genre. Because readers are always eager to share books they like with others, all four wrote back fulfilling his request and adding some of their favorites that didn't qualify as best sellers. Baka compiled a list of fifty books and handed it over to the guard on duty. He read through the list quickly, sometimes laughing at the various antics some authors imagined a vampire in love might do.
Vampire in love. Would it be possible for anything to be more ridiculous?
Of course both writers and readers believed vampire to be creations of fiction. If they only knew. That's when it hit him. But they don't know.
He could recreate vampire from his imagination as easily as the next person. Maybe better.
And so he set to work on a story about a young Transylvanian Alpine widow, the two step-children she was bringing up alone, and the vampire who loved her. He sent the manuscript to the publisher of his favorite of the books he had read under the nom de plume Valerie de Stygian and, within a few months, had a contract. By that time a second book was finished and ready for editing. The publisher was delighted.
He was self-aware enough to know he was using the vampire romances as a vehicle to redeem the reality of his experience. If he could just transform the horror of the killings into fantasies of romantic seductions full of pleasure and passion, then, if nothing else, he would provide a few hours pleasure to lovers of romance.
The only constant in Baka's life was time. Existence was bearable so long as his attention was carefully managed. The synthetic blood had been refined from time to time so that it had become slightly more tolerable. Still, the prospect of immortality alone in a fishbowl was depressing. He had begun to think that, if feelings counted, his goal was accomplished. He was dead. There was a part of his brain that was just too slow to realize it yet.
Having reached that conclusion, he had renewed his commitment to formulate a plan for suicide when he was informed that he was being transported to the New Jersey annexed unit under guard, of course, to act as consultant on a vampire-related problem in New York.
Outside? After being kept in a tower cell for nearly a hundred years, he was to see the world beyond the view of his narrow window and in person, not on TV. He had no particular emotional reaction to the news. He suspected that he had grown incapable of any feelings other than ambivalence. Shouldn't he feel something? Excitement perhaps?
Jefferson Unit hadn't changed that much. When he arrived, he was shown to Monq's offices and briefed on everything they knew about the vampire epidemic. The situation had grown intolerable and was, apparently, getting worse by the day.
Baka suspected the source of the problem was that the very underground system he had built had probably been rediscovered and was acting as a magnet to draw more vampire into the area. He promptly told them everything he knew about it.
Hours later, Monq and Sol secluded themselves for a private meeting.
They agreed that they would offer the vampire a temporary get-out-of-jail contract in exchange for his help. Desperate times. Desperate measures. They decided the prudent thing would be to take him back to his maximum security prison until the terms of the agreement were established and preparations made according to his instructions.
So Baka was once again bound for Unit Drac. On the way across the hub, with sixty pounds of chains draping his body, Baka was struck by an event that achieved the impossible. Something sparked his interest in living. It was the first time he had felt excitement since the night he heard Bach play his newly composed Toccata and Fugue.
What he saw was a lady knight, a wonder in itself, whom he judged to be extraordinarily strong by the way she controlled the ferocious beast who made no bones of the fact he would like to help Baka along with his death wish.
While Baka was wondering how long it would take to die at the jaws of such a fine animal, he looked up into the face of the woman who had tamed a nightmare. For the first time in centuries he felt the pleasure of genuine interest in something for its own sake. Not interest as a forced distraction to keep from reliving sins, but interest in the sense of wanting to get closer and hear her speak.
In the midst of hauling on the black dog's tether, her eyes met his and lingered just long enough to tempt him to break free. He smiled at her and saw in her response that she didn't know who he was and wondered why someone in chains was being escorted across the hub.
After all this time and dedication to the proposition of terminating the pain of consciousness for all eternity, there was something Baka wanted - to talk to the woman with the turquoise eyes and the strange, but enticing hair color. She was creation personified. He suspected that you wouldn't need vampire eyes to see that there was a field of rainbow color around her that moved and crackled with warmth and exuberance. Life!
If he could get close to all that energy, for even a few moments, he might remember what it felt like to be truly alive. She reminded him of something. Something buried so deep he couldn't quite identify it. But whatever that thing was, he wanted it.
In spite of the discomfort, he smiled in the darkness remembering the first time he saw Elora Laiken. He had wanted to gather her up like a bouquet of freshly picked flowers, press his face into the light of her aura and smell her fragrance, then hold onto her like a tether to the living. All that vivacity and spiritual power housed in such a bright and voluptuous body. At that moment it wouldn't have surprised him to learn that she routinely made the lame walk and the blind see. If she could cause Baka's monotony-numbed mind and ice packed blood to stir, those other miracles must be child's play for her.
***
CHAPTER_11
The book that contained Baka's self-report of his human life struck an emotional chord with Heaven. Her imagination formed images in her mind of the mountain cabin he described and the children he left behind. She could almost see them. Reading between the lines she felt she could sense the pain Baka felt at the loss of a wife and offspring he treasured.
He talked openly about the gratitude he felt toward the monks who gave him a chance at a life that very few people in those times could enjoy. He talked openly to the keepers of the record about his feelings for his family and how it haunted him constantly, the not knowing how his children had fared without him to provide for them and protect them.
Following a reference made to his work at the monastery at Cozio, she opened a large "coffee table" size art book. There were several photos of paintings owned by the Romanian Cultural Heritage Museum in Bucharest along with a couple of photos of murals from the old monastery at Cozio. The latter were faded and in need of cleaning or restoration, but the images were plain enough to imagine what they must have looked like six hundred years ago.
She turned the page. Of its own accord her hand reached out to t
ouch the photocopy of the image there. A stab of emotion caused tears to form inexplicably then rush to fall from her eyes. She moved quickly to keep them from landing on the glossy, color paper. What she saw before her was the same image that had flashed in her mind earlier when she had imagined Baka painting in his former life as a human. A chestnut haired madonna seated, but watching over children. Déjà vu.
Strange. She wasn't the type to get overly emotional about art. It was something she could take or leave. Her own apartment had exactly two wall hangings. They were framed posters that she knew would qualify as funky or quirky, but didn't think anyone was in danger of mistaking them for art. But these paintings were different.
It wasn't just that they were beautiful, which they were. It was that she could see the beauty of the painter's soul recorded for posterity, for as long as books such as this survived. The enormity of the injustice that had been done to Istvan Baka, of all people, was beginning to seep into her spirit and settle around her like a pall of mourning. This is the man you've been punishing.
She felt like she could almost see Istvan Baka coming through the door of the mountain cabin with a heart stopping smile and a generous embrace intended for a very lucky woman who melted into him and sighed his name. She wished she was that woman.
When the light from the window above began to fade and indicate the day was slipping away, Heaven turned on the overhead lights and began to read about what happened to Istvan Baka after he was taken into custody by Black Swan.
There were many entries regarding Baka's interaction with his guards after he was transferred to his permanent "home" at the converted Romanian fortress.
As the decades went by she followed his metamorphosis to accomplished musician and well-educated man. Observers were always impressed by the intensity of discipline he exhibited when approaching any task. The reports were in general agreement. They spoke of him as being mild tempered and interested in them personally. He was always sad. He never smiled. He rarely slept and was always busy painting, playing music, writing books. Writing books?
Oddly enough she was aware of the popular vampire romance series by Valerie de Stygian, but had no idea that the reclusive author and Baka were one and the same. Heaven was more than surprised.
She immediately pulled her intelliphone from her sweater pocket, purchased the entire series in cyberspace and had the books transferred to the e-tablet presently sitting on the kitchen bar in her apartment. She gathered up the books on the floor, taking one last, long look at the art photos, carefully put them away, turned off the lights and left the way she'd come.
***
CHAPTER_12
Elora pulled on the scarlet sweater that was made big enough to fit over her stomach and reached for the gray scarf. It didn't exactly match, but who was going to care? Not Ram or Blackie or the wolves or the trees. Ram was wearing a blue, knit shirt that made his eyes sparkle and pop. For a second she felt resentful that he got to look so good while she was so huge and felt like she was lumbering about.
"I have to go check on the house if we're goin' to have any chance of movin' in before the baby comes, but I do no' like leavin' you here. Does no' feel right. Why do you no' just come with me? I'm thinkin' two weeks is close enough to time that we should be movin' near the clinic. I could have us packed up in an hour."
The baby was to be delivered at The Order's clinic at headquarters. If Elora showed up for treatment at any non-Order medical facility, a lot of questions would be raised about her unusual constitution. Since The Order wasn't prepared to publicly reveal the presence of a visitor from another dimension and all that implies, that left few options for delivery sites.
Simon had given her a deadline. She could live her life away from Edinburgh up to a date pinpointed by the Order doctor, who was ecstatic to be acting as obstetrician since those services were so rarely needed. If she failed to report to Edinburgh before the deadline, she and Ram would have to pay for an emergency Whister flight should that became necessary.
Truthfully, Elora tried to suppress every thought surrounding the whole clinic thing. She'd spent enough months in a hospital room to last several lifetimes and wished her baby could be born anywhere else. Still, after nearly ten months, the state of being pregnant was getting old, tiresome, downright uncomfortable, and she was ready to turn the page.
Ram's mind wandered back to their venture into delivery planning. Dr. Nance had suggested that, as first time parents, they attend a one evening workshop on what to expect when the time came. He had arranged to get them into such an event at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, not far from Headquarters by taxi.
Ram and Elora sat in folding chairs near the back of a gathering of about twenty couples ranging in age from teens to late forties. There were a couple of times during the presentation when Elora wished she hadn't eaten dinner beforehand. One of those was during the part when they discussed emergency procedures.
They said the chances of a first baby arriving sooner than the mother could get to the hospital were very slim, but in the interest of precaution, they mentioned a few tips including an admonition that the baby's cord should not be cut by amateurs. The doctor giving the lecture said to keep the placenta together being careful not to puncture it, wrap it up and bring it to the hospital still attached to the baby where medical experts would safely detach the cord and tie it off. The idea of carrying placenta around on the outside of her body almost caused Elora to lose the crab cakes she had eaten for dinner. The ones she now wished she had never seen.
The lecture part of the evening gave way to movie time. They began with a video of a typical, normal, vaginal delivery, explaining each step in very clinical terms as if they wanted to be sure no one confused the images with porn. No chance of that.
Elora was riveted, no doubt putting herself in the place of the poor woman experiencing the very worst sort of privacy invasion, when she realized the air was growing warmer on her left side where Ram was sitting. About the same time she also realized that he was taking deeper breaths.
She jerked her head toward her mate. Even in the darkened room, she could see that he had lost color from his face. She grabbed his elbow and brought him to his feet in one motion as she stood up. He was going to have to walk on his own because carrying him might get their photo splashed on the front cover of the National Inquirer. The tagline would read, "Alien effortlessly carries her two hundred twenty pound husband to the safety of fresh air."
"Come on." They stepped over people to get out of the room then Elora rushed him along to get him outside where it was cooler and less crowded. "Rammel," she said as they hurried toward the door, "Do not hyperventilate! Try to slow your breathing."
He made a peculiar sound like a strangled snarl.
When she reached an exit, she slammed through the double doors to a courtyard and then stopped. Ram bent over and put his hands on his knees while he worked at steadying his breathing. Elora stood next to him rubbing his back in a soothing, circular motion. After a couple of minutes his breathing grew regular and he stood up looking just a little dazed. When he felt good enough to walk, they made their way to the street, where Elora hailed a cab. She'd gotten pretty good at it since he'd first taught her on a date in New York last Yuletide.
As they were climbing in she said, "Let's go to the pub and get a ginger ale. It'll settle our stomachs and be good for what 'ails' us."
"Funny."
"Oh I haven't even gotten started."
A few minutes later they were sitting at the bar of the Hung Goose pub waiting for two pints of ginger ale. When she turned to him with a gleam in her eye, he knew what was coming and braced himself.
"You know," she began, wearing a smile that could only be described as provocation personified, "you've got to admit that it's hysterical that the most heroic vampire slayer of this century faints at the sight of childbirth."
Ram's brows furrowed in a way that said he didn't want to be teased about it which naturally made Elor
a want to tease him all the more. He glanced around like he was making sure no one overheard her say that. "I did no' faint."
She just said, "Hmmm," and smiled in a way that would cause him to throttle her on the spot were it not for the fact that she was his own heart walking.
He looked away, sighed, took a big swig of ginger ale in defiance of the fact that she had told him three times to just sip it, and turned back to her, looking more serious than she had ever seen him. "Great Paddy, Elora. Is that...?"
"What?" He shook his head and looked away. "Is that what?"
"Is that what it's goin' to be like for... you know, for you? For us?"
She laughed out loud. "You've been watching those movies where childbirth is all antiseptic and pristine. Women with perfect hair and makeup are handed a new baby that's clean as rain water."
"I suppose I never thought much about the actual, em, mechanics."
"Well, judging, from what I just saw I'd say it's a good thing you're not the one who's been tapped for baby duty."
He looked at her with an intensity she hadn't ever seen directed at her before. "Truthfully? I would rather walk into a nest of vampire without a stick. And, believe it or no', the fact that 'tis you and no' me is no' makin' me feel that much better."
A Summoner's Tale - The Vampire's Confessor (Black Swan 3) Page 12
