Vampires She Wrote

by Eve Paludan

  “I rarely explain myself, Fang.”

  He turned to Justine. “Don’t speak of this to anyone.”

  “You’ve given me a great gift. Do I belong to you now, my lord?”

  “No. This is the difference between good and evil. Khan took you as a spoil of war, a slave, but to me, you are never to be sold, traded or possessed.”

  “I don’t understand. Do I belong to Fang now?” she asked.

  Dracula said patiently, “Justine, you belong only to yourself now. As long as you’re a vampire, your choices in undeath, from now on, are all your own.”

  “Lord Dracula, you saved me from utter ruin.”

  Dracula looked upward and briefly raised his hands. “I was but a conduit.”

  I was blown away by Dracula. I’d seen him perform a miracle and he took no credit.

  She looked around as if she suddenly didn’t know where she was.

  Dracula asked, “What will you do now, with your free will?”

  “I will share the spoils—the silver and the blood—with you.”

  Dracula turned to me, his bushy eyebrows raised. “Fang, you are due a portion.”

  “I don’t want any of it. I came for a mother’s stolen child.” The girl hadn’t made a peep for some minutes.

  He looked thoughtfully at me, as if he hadn’t expected me to refuse the spoils.

  As Justine and Dracula drank the henchman’s blood from the bowl of his severed head, I lifted the limp girl from her chair. I had the sense that she was playing possum. She was. She screamed when I pulled off the blackout hood and she saw the bodies.

  “Shh! It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” I said softly.

  “Get away!”

  I didn’t have much experience with children. “I’m taking you home.”

  “No!” She ran to a nearby bathroom and slammed the door, locking me out.

  “She’ll come out in a minute,” Justine said. “She’s just frightened.”

  I looked at Dracula. “You figured out this whole thing was a setup to get you here and kill you. How did I miss that?”

  “I’ve had centuries to study my enemies. And revenge is all I have nowadays.”

  “It’s all Genghis Khan has, too,” Justine said.

  As they drank the henchman’s blood, I worried that we’d stayed too long. “We should get Carrie away from here before Khan comes back.”

  “He won’t return tonight,” Dracula said. “He needs to replenish his strength and create new minions since we killed his favored ones.”

  I knocked on the bathroom door. “Carrie, come out!”

  “No!”

  “I was one of the ones who saved you.”

  Her little voice came through the door: “You saved me so you can bite me.”

  Suddenly, the fire alarm went off and red emergency lights came on in the basement.

  I looked to Dracula for orders. “Sir?”

  “Someone must have pulled the fire alarm.”

  I pounded on the bathroom door. “Open up! There’s a fire!”

  “Liar!”

  I’d had enough. I twisted the knob, broke the lock and found her hiding in a corner.

  “Come on, Carrie.” I hurriedly picked her up.

  She screamed and showed me a crude cross in her palm that she had drawn with the pink hand soap in the bathroom.

  “Go! Go!” she screamed and shoved that tiny palm at me.

  I’m a monster to her.

  “Watch this.” I kissed the cross on her grubby palm and got soap on my lips, but she got the message.

  Carrie threw her arms around my neck and sobbed into my cold, white flesh. Her hot tears ran down my neck and into my bloodied shirt. I almost wept, too. Not since I’d become a vampire had I felt so much compassion for a human.

  “I got you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I tossed my head at Justine. “Let’s go!”

  “Wait! The gladiators? Where are they?” Justine asked the girl.

  I was ashamed that I’d forgotten about them.

  Carrie pointed to a thick door that I’d assumed was steel. “Behind the silver door.”

  “Help me free them. Don’t kill them!” Justine said to Dracula.

  I had my hands full. Dracula and Justine broke down the solid-core silver door with a makeshift battering ram of a rusty iron pipe that they pulled from the wall.

  In full Roman-like battle gear and costumes, the gladiators poured up the stairs without even trying to fight us. When a couple of them bumped fists with Justine, or grasped forearms with her, Dracula caught my eye and raised his brows.

  I nodded back at him.

  By the time we followed them up the stairs, the gladiators had shapeshifted and were airborne as a flock of giant birds with blue-black feathers and silver-tipped talons. The sidewalk was flooding with people who were evacuating the building and looking up in the sky, all with their camera phones aimed upward.

  “Farewell, sweet murder of crows,” Dracula said as he watched them disappear. “If only they weren’t under Khan’s compulsion… what I could offer them would change their lot.”

  We fled down the street with the rescued child, who bounced against me as I ran.

  “You’re terrible with children,” Dracula noticed.

  “I don’t see you comforting her,” I retorted.

  “I look like I should be crouching behind gravestones or hanging upside down from a belfry. You’re the one blessed with a face that should be on the side of a bus. You’re the one with a physique that should be on a building in Times Square. In your underpants.”

  I smiled, embarrassed. “So, because of the way I look, it’s my job to comfort women and children?”

  “I’m 585 years old. I can’t do everything for you, Fang.”

  “You’re not so old that you didn’t notice the virtues of the vampiress gladiators.”

  He grinned that terrible grin of his, with all of his pointy yellow teeth. “This crusty vampire is never too old to appreciate a beautiful woman, be she mortal or vampiress.”

  “Good to know.”

  We made it to my car. Unfortunately, my Lexus SUV had a ticket on the windshield for parking more than eighteen inches from the curb. I shoved the ticket in my pocket.

  “Want to ride with us?” I offered.

  “No, I hate traffic.”

  “I guess we part here. Thank you, Dracul.”

  “No thanks are necessary. It was duty. I need my sword back. My scabbards.”

  I said, “They belong to The Order of the Dragon.”

  “Yes. They’ll have to be cleaned, re-sharpened and blessed before they’re used again.”

  I tucked the squirming girl sideways under one arm and handed over the razor-sharp weapon and the scabbards.

  “Fang, that’s not how you hold a child,” Justine scolded. She took Carrie in her arms. “You have to hold them right-side up or they’ll throw up on you.”

  I gagged.

  Justine laughed. “You just smeared your shoes through inches of blood, brains and entrails but what makes you gag is the mere thought of a child’s vomit?”

  I gagged again. “I’ll get you back for that, Justine.”

  “I’d buy a ticket to that,” Dracula said. He wiped the swords on his wool cape, sheathed them in the scabbards and tucked them into his sack.

  “I hope we see each other again,” I said.

  “It may be quite some time before we do. I have urgent business in Eastern Europe, but don’t forget what I said about my need for a new agent, an attaché, actually, for The Order of the Dragon.”

  “What happened to your previous attaché?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Of course, he is. “I have to think about it, Dracul. I have a business. A personal life.”

  He looked at Justine and back at me. “A personal life. I’ve been fighting for a cause for so long that I forgot what that’s like.” He paused. “Take as long as you need to consider my offer.”

  “Than
k you, sir. As always, it’s an honor to fight with you and learn from you.”

  “I made a mistake,” Dracula said.

  “About what?”

  “When I said all I have left is revenge, I was wrong.” He kissed me on the right cheek, as a man would kiss a grown son.

  I was sure that such expressions of emotion didn’t come to him easily.

  “Goodbye, Dracul.”

  “Godspeed, Fang.”

  “Nos morituri te salutamus,” he said to Justine.

  “Avete vos,” she replied.

  Dracula slipped away from us and turned into his dragon form. I didn’t see him take off, but I heard the flap of large wings receding.

  “What did Dracula just say to you? What did you say to him?” I demanded.

  “In Latin, he said, ‘We who are about to die, salute you.’ I answered, ‘Fare you well.’”

  Justine was full of surprises. I shook my head. “Let’s get gone.”

  I drove my SUV back toward the hooker hotel on Centinela Avenue in Culver City.

  Justine held Carrie in her lap.

  I asked her, “Why were you singing in there?”

  “So my magic dragon will make the bad man’s voice be quiet.”

  Justine and I just shrugged at each other.

  Carrie yawned, obviously exhausted, and managed to fall asleep against Justine.

  “She needs to be compelled to forget this, or she’ll be messed up for life.”

  “She definitely doesn’t trust men,” I said, “but her mother should wipe her memories of all this.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I loathe Sharky for what he did to her. And you.”

  “What he did to thousands of women and children. I can’t even tell you everything I know, Fang. You would never look at me the same way. If you knew one tenth of it, you would be repulsed.”

  “That was not your fault.”

  “But it’s a part of me forever.”

  “Let’s get something straight,” I said. “I would never not touch you because of something like that happening to you.”

  “Well, we haven’t… you know. I can’t say more in front of Carrie.”

  I gazed at Justine: bruised, bloody and brave. “Your past doesn’t make you ugly and who you are in this moment makes you beautiful.”

  Her eyes shimmered with gratitude. “We’re not safe yet. Sharky’s still alive.”

  “And his ilk. Khan has a following. We just don’t know how large it is.”

  “Maybe he’s on Facebook,” Justine said. “We can go see who liked his page.”

  “You’re crazy, Fang, but in a good way.”

  “Probably. At least his highest lieutenants are dead,” she added.

  “More will rise up from the dregs of humanity-turned-vampire. And the female gladiator vampires can’t choose for themselves if he recalls the flock.”

  She shook her head sadly. “I was given the gift of my freedom. I wish it was possible to free them, too.”

  “That would be impossible without Dracula to cast out the compulsion demons. This is far from over, Justine.”

  “You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

  “Expect it.”

  “When?”

  “Not tonight, I hope. I am just about all in. My head hurts a lot.”

  “I’ll look at it when we get home.”

  When we finally got to the bedbug hotel in Culver City, Paloma ran out of the lobby and lifted her child.

  “Mommy!” was the most joyful sound I’d heard, ever.

  “Thank you!” Paloma looked from me to Justine in relief.

  “Sharky escaped,” Justine said to her, “so warn Ace that he’s still in power. Oh, and your daughter needs a memory wipe of the things she’s seen and endured.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Paloma said.

  Ace pulled up, double-parked and left his Jeep running. It was packed to the hilt with their belongings.

  “So that’s where you went during the battle,” I said.

  “It seemed like a good time to slip away. We’re getting out,” he said. “Tattoo shop and all.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  They headed out and then, Justine and I did, too.

  “Think I’m higher on Sharky’s hit list?” I asked.

  “In the top three. You, me, Dracula.”

  “I won’t run like Ace did. I’m rooted in Southern Cali.”

  “You would never leave Sam and Kingsley.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Want me to drive?” Justine asked.

  “Why?”

  “Your skull is cracked open. I can see gray matter.”

  “No wonder my head’s killing me.”

  I pulled into a brightly lit convenience store where we both dripped blood all over the floor. We rounded up a seven-pound bag of ice. Eight rolls of paper towels. And a tiny tube of Super Glue. Justine also pulled a red sundress from a display rack.

  “You’re buying clothes at 7-Eleven?” I asked.

  “Well, it’s cute.”

  We headed for the checkout.

  “You both have blood all over you. Do you want me to call an ambulance?” asked the astonished clerk who rang up our purchases.

  “No,” Justine replied. “I’m taking him to the hospital.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “What happened?”

  “Vampires,” Justine replied matter-of-factly. “They’ve invaded L.A.”

  The clerk rolled her eyes. “You almost fooled me. Are you YouTube actors?”

  I shrugged. “Darn, you caught us.”

  “You can’t film in here. I have to clean all this, you know,” blurted the clerk.

  “Sorry.”

  On the way back to my house in Malibu, I held the whole bag of ice to my throbbing, split-open head and mourned the state of my car’s upholstery. “Who the heck trashes a brand-new Lexus?”

  “Apparently, we do.”

  My head was throbbing when I asked her, “Would you really have led Dracula into an ambush outside and killed him with Khan’s help?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “But now, you wouldn’t?”

  “Of course not. I was a slave of my creator.” She put her hand on my busted-up face in chagrin. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. You’re wondering if my affection for you was part of my compulsion from Khan.”

  We didn’t speak for a minute. “You got close to me to get a shot at killing Dracula. The little girl was bait. It was even a setup with Paloma and Ace.”

  “Sharky made me do it, and made them do it, but he didn’t tell me to seduce you. He told me to kill you.” She paused. “That really was their daughter and they really just escaped from Sharky. We did save Carrie. We saved that family. And we really did kill Sharky’s highest lieutenants.”

  “They were obviously part of the setup,” I said. “He chose the weakest of them and the poorest fighters because they were expendable to him in the greater cause of using me to lure Dracula there for twenty of them to kill two of us. And you were ready to turn on me and Dracula.”

  “I’m sorry, Fang,” she said quietly. “I could have, but I didn’t. If it had come down to it, I would have turned that silver scimitar on myself before I would have used it on you. Please believe that.”

  I felt so angry and hurt and betrayed. “And what you told me about your entity choosing me for a lover. Was that a lie, too?”

  “No. My entity and I genuinely care for you. As I said, from the moment I saw you in Vegas a year ago, I was taken with you. Khan used that and twisted it as a means toward his own ends.”

  I realized, “Khan never kicked you to the curb because he was tired of feeding you. He let you go to set me up. To set up Dracula, too. To kill us. Isn’t that right?”

  She sighed. “I’m deeply ashamed. I was—”

  “I know. You were under a powerful compu
lsion. If I hadn’t been the victim of one myself, we’d be having a huge fight right now.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you for feeling betrayed.”

  “I saw Dracula cast the demon out of you. I cut it up myself. I know there’s no more risk of betrayal from you. But how did I even live this long with my arms around such a deadly vampiress?”

  “Despite Khan’s orders, my entity fought my compulsion constantly. That’s how you stayed alive. Every time I got close to obeying Khan’s kill order, Buddy wouldn’t let me harm you.”

  “Thank him for me,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “You just did.”

  I felt my head throbbing. “Now that you’re free and I know your part in the attempted takedown of Dracula and me, what are your further intentions with me?”

  She swallowed hard and kept her eyes on the heavy traffic.

  “I think that’s a fair question,” I pressed.

  “I want you to forgive me. I want you to trust me.”

  I said, “Forgiveness is free, but trust has to be earned.”

  “You cut me, Fang.”

  “I do understand because I’ve been in your shoes. Doesn’t mean I’m thrilled to have been had. I kissed you!”

  “I kissed you instead of killed you,” she replied. “Can you empathize with my deceit?”

  “I understand it. To empathize would be to give it further power.”

  “Dracula knows the truth about my deceit and he gave me his stamp of approval,” she argued.

  “He saved you instead of killed you because he had compassion. And because he understands… grace.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “He treats you like a son. But why?”

  “I consider him the father of vampires. Our first one. Chosen. I treat him like a father.”

  “I might argue that Genghis Khan was a vampire long before Dracula was born at all.”

  I wasn’t about to tell her or anyone the secret that Dracula had told me about his own creation. “Maybe the concept of time is more abstract than we’ll ever understand,” I said lightly.

  “Maybe. Anyway, you proved yourself to be fiercely loyal.”

  “I tried. Dracula wants me to work for him.”

  “I heard. Will you?”

  “I don’t know if I could measure up to his expectations.”

  She looked at me with admiration. “You already have.”

  “Only with his help and yours, but I have a sinking feeling that tonight’s just the beginning of a maelstrom of evil about to crush us. There won’t be any hand-holding, protection or mentoring from Dracula for quite some time. I’m on my own.”