by Gayla Twist
After Elaina’s delightful performance at the bandstand, I wouldn’t have blamed Haley if she never wanted to speak to me again. I couldn’t imagine how she felt with my former lovers constantly popping up from behind every hedge. And the way that they behaved was astonishing. It was as if these women were taking my having fallen in love with my progeny as a personal snub. That was nowhere close to my intentions. Haley capturing my heart was as much of a surprise to me as to anyone. But to lash out at her, attempting to ruin any special moment we tried to share, was just bad manners. Whatever happened to being gracious?
I counted myself as the luckiest of men that my progeny understood that my heart was hers and hers alone. I couldn’t change my past. And I’m not saying that we hadn’t quarreled about it. We had. But I tried every day and in every way to prove that my feelings for her were genuine and true.
It seemed to take forever for the orchestra to finish their next song. I’d selected very talented musicians for my little surprise, but even if they were just amateurs busking in the subway for tips, they deserved my consideration. As the song drew to a close, I clear my throat rather loudly to catch the attention of the lead violinist. She was the one conducting the group in my absence. After the song ended, she did not cue them to start a new one, but just waited quietly for further instruction.
“You may all remove your blindfolds,” I said in a slightly raised voice and the musicians complied, looking around with curious eyes. They were all under my influence but that didn’t keep them from wondering about their experience. “You’ve done a wonderful job so far,” I told them. “I am very pleased. Besides the agreed upon fee, there will be a bonus for everyone. It’ll be included with your direct deposits.” That seemed to please them. “You will play for another forty five minutes,” I informed them, “and then you will be transported back to Helsinki, where you will board a private jet and return to your homes.”
Antarctica was nowhere near the capital of Finland. In fact, they were almost on the exact opposite sides of the globe. But it wasn’t an uncommon cover story for the South Pole resort. Mortals would remember snow and ice; they would remember a long plane flight; they would remember to pick up some souvenirs at the gift shop, which I had already provided. But, if I’d executed my influence over them properly, then they would remember very little else besides the plump paycheck in their accounts. And maybe they’d tell their friends about some love-sick eccentric with money to burn.
There were vampires who would have behaved otherwise; they would have stiffed the musicians, or even feasted on their blood. But, in my opinion, that was a good way to deplete the mortal talent pool that the world had on offer, and I would not take part in it.
After thanking the musicians, I turned to leave, but not without mentioning to the couples closest to me that the entertainment would be ending shortly and that the orchestra would be transported home immediately afterward. I wanted to get back to Haley, but I didn’t want any shenanigans with the mortals after I left.
It seemed like I’d covered everything, so I began hurrying up the stairs. I was distracted, eager to return to Haley, when out of the shadows stepped Elaina. She was holding a goblet of wine. “Dorian,” she said in a hushed voice.
I admit that I drew back a little. It was unintentional, but it was obvious that she’d noticed. “Oh, hello, Elaina,” I said, doing my best not to show my annoyance. She had intentionally ruined a surprise I’d been planning for weeks and I didn’t appreciate it.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she said after gauging my reaction. “I guess I shouldn’t have brought out the claws. But I need to speak with you rather urgently.”
I found it hard to imagine that Elaina had anything of importance to tell me, but I didn’t want to be rude, and I knew that it didn’t pay to cross her. I had thought we’d parted on good terms, but she wasn’t kidding about the claws. “What do you want to tell me?” I asked, trying to sound pleasant enough.
She glance around rather suspiciously, as if she was worried there was a spy in every snowdrift. “I can’t tell you here.”
“We can head to one of the bars, then.” I thought I could managed a quick drink to appease her before Haley would begin to wonder where I’d disappeared. The snow was picking up and a stiff wind had begun to blow. There was a storm coming on quickly, so the sooner I got to Haley, the better.
“No, a bar’s too public,” Elaina said, still keeping her voice so low that it almost blended in with the wind.
“Then where?” I asked, feeling my annoyance level rising. I felt like she was trying to trap me in some silly game and I didn’t for one minute believe she had anything of value to tell me.
“I’d take you to my suite, but Paolo is there,” Elaina said. “And he’d stake me if he knew I was going to tell you… well,” she stammered. “He wouldn’t want me to say anything.”
“We can speak in one of the tunnels, then. Anything to get out of this blasted wind.” My annoyance was showing through and there was nothing I could do about it, but hope to blame it on the weather. Just because vampires didn’t feel the cold didn’t mean that having snow pelting you in the face wasn’t annoying.
“Fine,” she agreed. “The nearest access is over there,” she said, gesturing with the hand that held the goblet just as a blast of wind hit us, spraying the contents of her cup all over the front of my tuxedo.
“Damn it, Elaina!” I couldn’t help but exclaim. My crisp white shirt was now soaked with crimson.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed. “That was clumsy. You’ll probably want to send for one of the staff to have that rinsed out before the stain sets.”
I normally wouldn’t have been that concerned about staining a shirt, but it was the only tuxedo shirt that I had with me in Antarctica and there wasn’t exactly a shop selling men’s finery anywhere within a thousand miles. “You’re right,” I said, turning to head toward my room. “I’ll speak with you later.”
“But what I have to tell you has to be now,” she insisted, tagging after me. “Otherwise it’ll be too late.”
I suppressed a sigh of irritation. “Too late for what?”
“Too late to warn you,” she said between gritted teeth.
“Okay, fine,” I relented. “Just let me get out of this shirt and ring for the maid service. Then we can find a private spot somewhere, but we have to make this quick.”
Elaina was really irritating me with her persistence to confide in me whatever random piece of gossip she had somehow decided was important. I remembered that from our time together; she’d always been a drama queen, to use a modern parlance. Haley was starting to rub off on me.
Thoughts of my progeny made me want to hurry even more. I had to change, call for someone to pick up my shirt, let Elaina speak her mind, and then get over to Haley before the storm really hit.
Outside the door to my rooms I hesitated. To be honest, I didn’t want to invite Elaina inside. I didn’t trust her; she was obviously up to something. I was sure it had to be some scheme to drive Haley and me apart. But with the storm blowing strong, I couldn’t exactly ask her to stand outside in a snowdrift. Even with the undead being impervious to the cold, it was still incredibly bad manners. Fortunately, my suite of rooms was more like an apartment than just a couple of bedrooms with a communal area. When Haley and I had first started traveling together, I had always just booked us one suite of rooms, assuming that having a separate bedroom would be enough distance between us. But my desire for her was so strong that having a mere living room, dining room and kitchen separating us wasn’t enough. In fact, having an entire resort complex between us wasn’t enough. Keeping my urges under control was a constant struggle.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Elaina asked, sensing my hesitation. “Or is your love so fragile that you’re worried the mere presence of another female in your suite will cause it to shatter?”
“You’re mistaken, Elaina,” I said, trying to keep my voice as ne
utral as possible. “I was just wondering what I had done with the key.” Then I had to make a show of patting down my pockets to find my swipe card.
“Make yourself at home,” I said, once we were inside, gesturing toward a divan that was conveniently close to the front door. I felt Elaina step up close behind me. “I won’t be a min…”
An electric shock jolted through my body and then everything went black.
Chapter 9
Dorian
I opened my eyes to the pitch black. Being a vampire, I had night vision, of course, but I could still distinguish light from dark and I was very much in the dark. I was in a coffin, but one I didn’t recognize. My head hurt like I was a mortal who had drunk too much wine. Where the hell was I? I tried to think of how I got there, but where a memory should have been, there was just a void.
What was the last thing I could remember? Closing my eyes, I tried to focus. Nothing. But I could feel memories hiding in the corners of my mind. It was like having a word on the tip of your tongue.
Fresh air might clear my head, I decided. So I reached up and push on the coffin lid. It didn’t move. Propping myself up on a forearm, I pushed harder, but still with no success. I felt around the interior for a latch concealed in the satin lining, but was nothing. I tried jiggling the lid and was relieved to note a bit of movement. If there had been no give at all to the lid, then I would have understood that I’d been nailed in and probably buried six feet down into the ground.
My mind raced to a childhood fear I had while still a mortal. An older cousin had told me about safety coffins, which became popular during a couple of cholera epidemics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The fear was that people weren’t actually dead when they were buried, but just unconscious. If a mortal revived after his burial, then the safety coffin enabled him to signal to people above ground that he was actually alive, usually by ringing a bell or raising a flag. Of course many of these supposed “safety” coffins forgot to supply the non-deceased with a supply of oxygen.
My cousin’s intent had been to terrify me — he’d always been a bit of a sadist — and he was successful. I couldn’t sleep for fear that I would be mistaken for dead and I would be buried alive. My Aunt Alice finally pulled me aside and explained that one day I would be a vampire — as was the tradition in my family — so I would sleep in a coffin and never actually need to breathe. This information was not comforting. I did not want to become a vampire. I did not want to drink blood and sleep in a coffin. I became even more terrified, much to my oldest cousin’s delight.
I stared at the lid of the coffin and wondered about my situation. It was strange that I could remember that I had an Aunt Alice but not my own name or how I got stuck in a coffin in the first place.
I decided that being able to look around might improve my memory, — plus, no one locks a vampire in a coffin with good intentions — so it was time to put a little brute strength behind my predicament. Pulling my legs into my chest, I pressed with the full force of both my arms and legs against the inside of the lid. It only took a few moments before the wood began to protest under the strain, cracking and popping.
“Wait, wait, I’m coming,” I heard a voice call out.
But it was too late; I gave a final, mighty heave and the lid flew open. I sprang from the box and was ready to face whatever or whoever was waiting for me.
“I would have opened it for you, if you’d given me just another minute,” a female voice said. I turned around to see a vampiress with short brown hair as thick as wheat that had been tipped with gold. Her eyes were large and a bright China blue. In a raised hand she was holding a key. She looked like she must have been turned when she was very young, maybe seventeen or eighteen, the same age as me.
“I preferred to take control of the situation,” I told her.
This made her smile. “You always were the funny one in your family, Darius.”
I did a double-take. Was that my name? Darius? I couldn’t tell if it felt right or not. “Who are you?” I asked. If she knew me, then it seemed only right that I should know her.
“Misty,” she said, sounding surprised that I didn’t already know. “Are you feeling alright?”
“Why did you lock me in a coffin?” I demanded, while doing a quick scan of the room. It was just an ordinary bedroom in some well-to-do household, as far as I could tell.
“We were worried about you,” she said, taking a step forward and extending her hand, as if to caress my head. “We didn’t want you waking up and freaking out.”
I pulled away from her. “So you thought locking me in a box would be more relaxing?”
This made her giggle. “No.” She shook her head. “It was my uncle’s idea. You know how he is; he still thinks of himself as the family physician, even though he went to medical school when they were still bleeding people and using leeches.”
I quickly ran the numbers in my head. Even though she looked young and innocent, Misty must have been at least a hundred years old, if not significantly older, if the doctor was her true uncle. “Sorry about this,” I said, picking up a piece of the lid and tossing it in on the casket’s pillow. “I can pay for the damages.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, waving away my offer. “I’m sorry I didn’t check on you sooner.” She flashed me a sheepish grin. “I was reading and just sort of lost track of the time.”
I wasn’t sure what to do next. She seemed perfectly cordial, but I didn’t know her from Eve.
“Would you like some refreshment?” she asked. “I’m sure you must be hungry.” When I nodded my head, she added, “Let’s go to the dining room. It’s almost time for dinner and I’m sure the servants will have things already laid out. It’s buffet style tonight,” she informed me. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“It sounds delightful,” I told her, pulling the door to the room open a little wider to allow her to exit ahead of me.
I tried to list in my head everything that I knew; I was a vampire, my name was Darius something, I was old friends with a vampiress named Misty, I more than likely had an aunt named Alice, and I liked the color blue, apparently, if I was to judge by my attire. I was clad in a blue velour shirt that appeared at least a size too big for me and dark blue track pants which were at least an inch too long. My clothes made me frown. I may not have known my name, but I knew my tastes. And what I was wearing wasn’t it.
“We sent your clothes out for cleaning,” Misty said, as if reading my mind. “There was a lot of blood.”
My own or someone else’s, I wondered.
I followed the charming vampiress, who looked more like a pixie, along a wide hallway and then down a grand, curving staircase. We were in a mansion, richly furnished and obviously modified for the undead. I noted that there were plenty of windows, but all of them had steel rollers that could be lowered to completely block out the light.
The ground floor was decorated much like any other old blood, undead home with numerous oil paintings and quite a bit of solid oak furniture. I swear that half the antique stores in the United States would have gone out of business without the patronage of the undead. After all, not everyone could be from old money, but many preferred to at least radiate the appearance of it.
“Oh look,” Misty said as we approached the dining room. “My uncle is here before us.”
Misty’s uncle was a man who appeared to have been turned in this poorly preserved forties. He must have lived a mortal life of excess; becoming a vampire had only managed to make his appearance tolerable, where most mortals appeared much more attractive after transforming into the undead state.
“Uncle, look who is awake,” Misty said, beaming at me and then smiling at her relative.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better, Damion,” the uncle boomed, his voice filling the room.
“Darius,” Misty gently corrected.
“Darius,” repeated the uncle, glowering at her. Then, shifting his gaze to me, he asked, “How’s the head?�
��
“Still a little fuzzy,” I admitted.
“Well then have something to drink,” the man insisted, filling me a goblet from a buffet table laid out with the usual paltry choices of a vampire’s meal. “That’ll clear things right up.”
“Thank you.” I accepted the glass and drank deeply. I hadn’t realized that my stomach was growling.
“So,” said the uncle, whose name I still didn’t know. “How about explaining yourself.”
He had me there; I wasn’t sure what needed explaining. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“What happened to you?” the uncle sputtered, showing the impatience of an older man used to having everyone’s immediately cooperation.
“I hardly know,” I admitted, quite truthfully.
“Listen here, you show up at my door covered in blood and half out of your head,” the man said, obviously irritated. “I think that warrants some sort of explanation. I suppose you were feeding off some opium addict and got a little out of your depths.”
I tried to think if that sounded like a possibility. No, I was pretty sure I wasn’t the kind of creature of the night who fed off addicts in the hopes of getting some kind of… what was the expression? I felt the absence of something or someone for whom I could turn to as a reference of modern slang. Oh yes, contact high. That was the expression. Either way, it sounded unsavory and like something I wouldn’t enjoy.
The man went on. “I hope you don’t assume your little mishap excuses you from the gaming tomorrow night.”
“Oh, Uncle. No. You can’t,” Misty implored him.
“You stay out of this, young missy,” the man snapped. “Unless you’d like me to contact your father to let him know…”
“Please, sir,” I interrupted. “There's no need for unpleasantries. Of course I can still participate in the gaming.” My head felt clear, even if my memory was fuzzy. As long as they weren’t pushing baccarat — which I never could bother to learn — then I would be fine.
