“Roadkill?” I asked Allie as she pulled me toward the door, glancing over my shoulder to Kristoff. “You’re joking.”
His eyes glittered with a light I found hard to understand.
“I wish I were. There’s a lot you have to learn about vampires, Pia. Take it from someone who went into her relationship kicking and screaming all the way-the learning curve may be steep, but it’s also a whole lot of fun.”
CHAPTER 6
“. . . and then the spirit is bound to the item you picked to be the keeper, and voilà! Instant way to transport them when they can’t get around themselves.”
I eyed the small blob of yarn on Allie’s palm as we entered my room. It had a slight glow to it, a little shimmer that warned it was not all that it seemed. “That is very handy, I admit. But my spirits don’t seem to have any problem traveling around. That is, they can get in a car with me if they want. That sort of thing.”
Allie nodded and tweaked the satin eiderdown on the bed. “Christian might have given you a larger room, but I suppose there’s nothing wrong with being cozy. Especially since you and Kristoff have been separated for so long.”
“You’re going to have to forgive me, but I’m curious-why did you believe that we’re innocent when everyone else didn’t?”
Before Allie could say anything, the door to a corner closet was flung open as a small child burst out, a towel tied around his neck in the form of a cape, his hands curved into claws, his fangs bared as he yelled, “I am Dwacula!”
“You’ll have to forgive Josef. He likes springing out at people,” Allie said with a motherly smile. He jumped around the room making various gargling noises that I imagined he believed were terror-inspiring. “He and Esme watched one of the old Dracula movies, and he decided that he wants to be a vampire when he grows up.”
“Wise up, childwen of the night!” the boy shouted as he climbed onto a tapestry-backed chair, leaping off with a triumphant yell.
I gave Allie a startled glance. She laughed. “That was my first response, too. Christian was less amused, but you know how the Dark Ones are-they may look modern and sound modern, but they are far too medieval for words sometimes. You should hear him rant when I let Joe watch Buffy . You are innocent, aren’t you?”
“Of the charges laid at my doorstep? Yes,” I said, somewhat taken aback by the quick change of subject.
Josef climbed onto my bed and started bouncing on it until his mother plucked him off with a warning.
“I thought so.” She herded the boy back into the closet, telling him, “Go see to your dungeons, pumpkin. I think Van Helsing is in there.”
“Van Helsing!” Josef’s face lit up as he struggled with the knot on the towel.
Allie patiently untied it, tossing the towel on the chair as the boy disappeared into the closet, pulling the door closed after him. “He also wants to be Van Helsing. I can’t say I blame him after seeing Hugh Jackman in the movie, although they had the vampires all wrong in it, but that happens a lot. Where were we?”
“Um . . . Kristoff and I are innocent?” Exhaustion swept over me. I plopped down on the bed.
“That’s right.” She considered me for a moment. I found it vaguely disconcerting having those odd eyes scrutinizing me so intently, although I had to admit that I liked Allie. There was a sense of down-to-earth straightforwardness to her that I found refreshing. “I know what it’s like to have life out of your control, and I don’t like being manipulated any more than I can see you do. If you were guilty, you wouldn’t be quite so angry, if you know what I mean.”
I nodded. “It just irritates me that everyone can suddenly think the worst of me after what happened. I saved Kristoff’s life!”
She toyed with a small vase on the bureau for a moment. “Well, you have to remember that it’s not just a matter of whether or not they like you. I think Christian does. He spoke quite well of you when he came home from Iceland.”
“Sebastian doesn’t,” I said, making a little face.
“He’s . . . he’s a bit scarred yet. He went through some hard times and only recently found his Beloved. But he’s Christian’s oldest friend, and he is actually a very nice man once you get to know him. He’s just a bit suspicious of people at first. Given his history, it’s understandable.”
“Do we really smell horrible?” I asked, sidetracked for a moment.
She laughed. “So they say, but I think it’s a matter of the man in question. Christian says they get used to it, and he doesn’t think of it anymore.”
“It’s just rather disconcerting knowing I smell like a pile of garbage,” I answered. “I feel like bathing in perfume or something.”
“Kristoff certainly didn’t look like he found you offensive,” she said, a teasing note in her voice.
I looked down at my hands for a moment, not really wanting to discuss the issue of a relationship with Kristoff.
“I’m sorry,” Allie said quietly, her odd eyes seeing far more than I was comfortable with. “I didn’t mean to get personal.”
“It’s all right,” I lied. “It’s just that . . .”
“You still have some things to work out.”
“Yes.”
“Who doesn’t?” She smiled. “You should have seen Christian and me when we first met.”
My curiosity got the better of me again. “How did you find each other? I’m kind of amazed that they ever find a Beloved at all, since there’s only one for each vampire.”
“Well, there is and there isn’t,” she said with a little laugh. “You’d have to ask a woman named Joy about that, but that’s just going to confuse you, so we’ll move on. The first time I laid eyes on Christian, he was lying naked and covered in blood from a hundred cuts all over his body. It was the most romantic thing ever.”
I stared in horror at her.
She laughed again. “We had a rocky start. Christian was determined to have me admit I was his Beloved, and I wanted nothing to do with him.”
My gaze dropped again. “That’s not quite the problem between Kristoff and me,” I said, my heart wincing in pain at the memory of Kristoff looking at his ring.
“I’m sure you’ll work out whatever is giving you grief. These guys may seem overbearing and arrogant as sin, but you have to admit there’s something to be said for the fact that out of all the women in the world, you’re the only one for him.”
I said nothing, not wishing to dwell on it. A change of subject was called for. “Do you think there’s any chance that if I worked on Christian, he’d let Mattias and Kristjana go?”
“Well . . .” She slid me an odd look. “Christian is the head of the Moravian Council. That position has a lot of responsibility with it.”
She waited a moment, obviously expecting me to understand something that wasn’t at all clear.
“I’m afraid that I don’t see what one has to do with the other,” I admitted.
She sighed and thought for a moment. “He doesn’t break rules. He can’t, not in his position. And what you’re asking for would mean he’d have to do just that. So no, I don’t think there’s anything you can do that will get him to release Kristjana and Mattias.”
There was an odd emphasis on the word “release” that I didn’t quite understand. My brain chased around a hundred different thoughts, all of them ending with the same sad conclusion: If Christian wouldn’t let them go, I was going to be damned to Zoryahood for the rest of my life.
“I think you and Kristoff will be comfy here,” Allie said, looking around the room. “I’m sure you’ll have him up to speed in no time. He was already looking a hundred times better after dining at Casa Pia.”
I frowned at the thought of Kristoff being held prisoner, starved so callously. “He does look better, but I doubt if he’s back to full strength.”
“Probably not.” Allie paused a moment. “Despite what you may think, he wasn’t mistreated any more than the two reapers were. Kristoff was offered blood-he just refused to take it. We di
dn’t try to starve him, Pia. You have to understand that for a Dark One to be separated from his Beloved for a short while is bearable. It’s not comfortable in the least, not for either person, but it’s bearable. But to go two months . . .” She shook her head. “I can only imagine the pain Kristoff must have suffered, being deprived of you. And I’m sure you didn’t have a grand old time.”
I looked down at myself and immediately sat up straighter to lessen the resemblance between me and a Buddha statue. “Unfortunately, I’ve managed to eat just fine during our separation.”
“That’s not quite what I meant,” she answered. “When Christian is gone for more than a couple of days, I start getting headaches. Nothing truly horrible, but a low-grade headache that persists no matter what I take.”
I thought of the headaches I’d been prone to during the last few months. They were so constant, I’d gone to both my optometrist and a doctor to see if I was starting to have migraines. “I’ve had headaches a lot lately,” I admitted.
“But worse than that is a sense of . . .” She hesitated, her hands making a vague gesture. “Oh, I don’t know quite how to describe it. It’s a sense of being . . . incomplete. As if some part of me were missing. Things just don’t seem right, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I do,” I said slowly, noticing for the first time that the vaguely empty feeling inside me seemed to be gone. “It’s as if you were hollow inside.”
“Hollow, that’s it exactly. And if you’re concerned about your other husband’s well-being, you’re welcome to talk to him. He’s confined to a room on the second floor. We don’t let him leave unattended-there are wards on the door-but we do take him out for little jaunts about the garden to get a bit of fresh air. He’s not mistreated in any way, and I’m sure that goes for the other reaper, as well.”
“A ward?” I asked. “What exactly is that?”
“It’s basically a magical symbol that’s drawn in the air or on an item. We find it works better than mundane things like locks. The ward allows people to pass through the door to enter the room, but not leave by it.” She got to her feet, opening the door to the closet. “Come out, Van Helsing. There’s a vampire downstairs who needs seeing to.”
“Vampiwe!” Josef emerged from the closet with an old-fashioned wooden shoe form. He held it by the long metal skewer that poked into the wooden foot, waving it about as if it were a crossbow. “Shoot the vampiwe!”
“That’s right, snuggles. Go shoot Daddy.”
The boy ran out of the room, yelling about vampires. Allie followed more slowly, pausing at the door. “If you need anything, just give me a holler.”
“I will,” I said, still distracted by the idea that I could be so affected by the loss of Kristoff. Just in time I remembered the question I had wanted to ask. “Oh, can I do the keeper thing with any spirit?”
“So long as they’re not bound to someone else, you should be able to. Although your ghosts sound like the grounded kind. The kind I summon are unbound.”
“Unbound? I’m not sure I understand.”
“Well, yours can make themselves seen and heard, and can interact with our reality. There are other spirits out there who have to be Summoned to that state. Those are the ones I deal with.”
“How do they get that way?” I asked, thinking of the ghosts who’d been waiting for me in Iceland.
She shrugged. “All we know is that there are several types of spirits. Some bound, some unbound, some present who refuse to be Summoned. Still others, like Esme, refuse to be Released.”
“Sent on, you mean?”
“Yep.”
“I know one of those,” I said, thinking fondly of Ulfur and his ghostly horse. “He would have gone on to Ostri, but he stayed to help me.”
“Bind him to a keeper and take him places with you,” she said with a little shrug. “Assuming he wants to go, that is. Keepers are a great way to let them travel and keep them safe. Not to mention out of your hair for those times when you want a little privacy.”
I smiled in response to her sudden grin, and was about to thank her when Christian appeared in the doorway. He held his son on one hip, the small metal skewer that I recognized coming from the antique shoe form sprouting out of his stomach. The glare he gave his wife would have scared me to death if it had been directed at me. “Allegra, would it be asking too much for you to not encourage my son to stake me at every available opportunity?”
“He was being Van Helsing. That’s what Van Helsing does. And I didn’t tell him to go for your heart,” she answered, patting her boy on the head. “Besides, I thought he was going to shoot you with his pretend crossbow. What a clever little boy you are to make a stake out of the shoe form.”
Christian’s expression turned into one of sheer martyrdom as he plucked the metal skewer out of his belly. “That’s it. I am destroying your Buffy DVDs. Kristoff, if you ever have children, I would advise you to ban any and all DVDs from your home. Come, Beloved. There are a few things I have to say to Josef, and I believe they will benefit you, as well.”
Kristoff, who had been standing behind him, watched with a horrified expression as Christian tossed the stake onto a hall table before taking his wife’s hand. Allie winked at me as she left with him, leaving Kristoff and me alone.
“Pia, are you back?” The door opposite me opened. Magda appeared, rosy and smelling of perfumed bath salts. “That was you I heard. I see you found Kristoff. Hello again. I don’t know if you remember me. I’m Pia’s friend Madga.”
“Magda and her boyfriend, Raymond, kindly offered to come with me to Vienna,” I explained.
Kristoff made her a little bow, but said nothing.
“Well . . .” Magda examined Kristoff for a moment, then indulged in a little eyebrow semaphore with me. “Ray’s having a quick shower, but he wanted to go out and see the sights. I assume you two prefer to take a rain check on doing the tourist thing?”
I glanced at Kristoff. He didn’t look even remotely as horrible as when I first saw him, but his face was still much too gaunt, and more important, I sensed a gnawing hunger in him that had yet to be fully appeased. “I think a rain check will be best.”
“Gotcha. How did the meeting with the fanged ones go?”
I dredged up a somewhat weak smile. “It was . . . interesting. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, OK?”
“All right, but I’m going to hold you to that. Nice to see you again, Kristoff.”
Magda withdrew into her room with a pointed look at me that warned she would, indeed, expect full disclosure.
I looked at Kristoff. Kristoff looked at me.
“Awkward?” he asked.
“Well . . . yes. Kind of.”
“If you would prefer I do not share a room with you-”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, grabbing him by the shirt and hauling him into the room after me. “It’s not like we haven’t slept together before. If you’re worried I’m going to demand sex from you-”
“Christ, woman, is that all you think about?” Kristoff exploded suddenly, one hand running through his lovely brown curls.
“Sex?” I asked, my stomach contracting at his mistaken belief. I started to protest, but he cut me off.
“No!” He stormed forward, his hands clamping down on my shoulders as I tried to back away. “Why do you persist in deluding yourself that I don’t desire you?”
My jaw dropped for a moment before I snapped back, “Why? Maybe the fact that you ran away from me has something to do with it.”
“I explained that,” he said grimly, but there was a heat building in his eyes that immediately made all sorts of hidden parts of me sit up and take notice. “You said you wanted Alec. I was simply giving you what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?” I bit back the scream of frustration that threatened to burst free, saying instead, “Putting my wishes aside for a moment, why on earth would you think that Alec and I had a future? You knew I was your Beloved, not his.”
“We were Joined, but hadn’t, for lack of a better word, consummated the relationship. Alec might not have been able to feed off you, but if you had set your minds on being together, you could have a life with him with relative comfort.”
“But you couldn’t survive for long without me, could you?”
His eyes flickered to the window. “Probably not. But a Beloved can survive the loss of a Dark One. Even if I died, you and Alec could have had a future.”
I was silent for a moment, dozens of thoughts spinning around in my head. Foremost among them was the knowledge that such a noble gesture was made hollow by the fact that he had no burning desire to be with me. He was willing to die to remain true to his long-lost love.
Tears burned my eyes for a moment. I turned away and made myself busy by fussing with the blankets and pillows on the bed. “Well, what’s done is done,” I said, ever the pragmatist. I wanted badly to tell him exactly how I felt, but I had already told him I didn’t want Alec, and he had responded as I knew he would-a polite refusal to address the issue of any feelings between us beyond those of mere physical compatibility.
“Yes, it’s done.” There was a thread of something intangible in his voice. I felt him behind me, not touching me, but near enough that the heat from his body made my back tingle. “Speaking of that night, I have been remiss in thanking you for returning my soul. I apologize for such an oversight. Having a soul again certainly wasn’t anything I ever thought would happen.”
“Again?” I asked, curiosity making me turn around to face him. “You had one before?”
His face smoothed out into a mask of indifference that I was coming to recognize meant he was hiding his true feelings. “There are two types of Dark Ones: those born to an unredeemed father, and those who were made.”
“And you were one of the latter?”
Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang do-7 Page 10
