Beth_Fantaskey-Jessicas guide to dating the dark side.

by Jessica's Guide to Dating the Dark Side (lit)

  Abandoning poor Belle, knowing I should cool her down and put her in her stall, I stomped up the steps and ran inside.

  "Mom!" I hollered at the top of my lungs, slamming the door behind me.

  My mother emerged from the dining room, shushing me with a finger to the lips. "Jessica, please. Keep your voice down."

  "What happened? How is he?" I pushed past her toward the dining room, but Mom caught my arm. .

  "No, Jessica . . . not right now."

  I searched her face. "Mom?"

  "It's serious, but we have reason to believe he'll pull through. He's getting good care. The best care we could give him, safely," she added cryptically.

  "What do you mean 'safely'?" Safe care came from hospitals. "And whose car is out there?"

  "We called Dr. Zsoldos—"

  "No, Mom!" Not Dr. Zsoldos. The crazy Hungarian quack who'd lost his medical license for using controversial folk "remedies" from the old country, right here in the United States, where people had the good sense to believe in real med­icine. I should have recognized the car. Long after the rest of the county had shunned him, old Zsoldos and my parents had re­mained friends, huddling around the kitchen table and gab­bing into the night about fools who didn't trust "alternative therapies." "He'll kill Lucius!"

  "Dr. Zsoldos understands Lucius and his people," Mom said, taking me by the shoulders. "He can be trusted."

  When my mom said "trusted," I got the sense that she wasn't just talking about whether the quack should have a li­cense. "Trusted with what?"

  "Discretion."

  "Why? Why do we have to be discreet? Did you see the blood coming from his mouth? His smashed leg?"

  "Lucius is special," Mom said, shaking my shoulders a little, like I should have realized this fact a million years ago. "Accept it, Jessica. He would not be safe in a hospital."

  "And he's safe here? In our dining room?"

  Mom released my shoulders and rubbed her eyes. I realized how tired she must be. "Yes, Jessica. Safer."

  "But he's bleeding inside. Even I can tell that. He probably needs blood."

  My mom looked at me strangely, like perhaps I'd finally just grasped some important truth. "Yes, Jess. He needs blood."

  "Then take him to a hospital, please!"

  Mom stared at me for a long moment. "Jessica, there are things about Lucius that most doctors wouldn't understand. We can talk about this later, but right now, I need to return to him. Please, go upstairs and try to be patient. I'll tell you as soon as I have news on his progress."

  Turning her back on me, Mom opened the door to the din­ing room, and I heard soft voices come from inside the dark­ened room. My father's voice. Dr. Zsoldos's. Mom slipped in to join their secret cabal, and the door clicked shut.

  Furious, scared and frustrated, I ran upstairs, forgetting poor Belle entirely. I'm ashamed to admit that she spent the whole night in the November cold, wandering around the barns and the paddock, her saddle still on her back. I was too unhinged to think about the horse that had carried me to a measure of personal glory just a few hours earlier. Instead, I climbed onto my bed and stared out the window, trying to fig­ure out what to do.

  As I debated calling a real doctor myself, I caught sight of my father slipping out the door and hurrying across the yard toward the garage. The light went on in Lucius's apartment, but only for a few moments. It snapped off again, and seconds later, Dad was back, striding across the lawn. I could see, in the moonlight, that he carried something in his hands. Some­thing about the size of shoe box but with rounded corners. Like a paper-wrapped parcel.

  I waited until Dad's footsteps passed through the house and the dining room door snicked shut before creeping downstairs, avoiding all the squeaky spots that might give me away. I prac­tically crawled up to the dining room door and turned the knob, opening the door just a crack. Just enough to see inside.

  The fire in the fireplace had nearly guttered out, and the dimmer switch on the iron chandelier had been spun to its low­est setting, but I was able to make out the scene.

  Lucius was laid out on our long plank dining table, the one we used only for big occasions. He was bare-chested, the blood­stained clothes gone—cut away, I supposed—and his lower half was covered with a white sheet. His face was completely placid. Eyes closed, mouth composed.

  He looked like death. Like a corpse. I'd never been to a fu­neral before, but if someone could look more dead than Lucius did at that moment. . . Well, I couldn't imagine how they'd manage it.

  Is he dead?

  I stared at his chest, willing it to rise, but if his lungs pumped, it was too weakly for me to discern in the darkened room. Please, Lucius. Breathe.

  When Lucius's chest still didn't move, something cracked open deep inside me, and my entire body felt like a vast cave with a frozen wind surging through the empty spaces. No . . . he can't be gone. I can't let him go. I struggled to calm myself. If Lucius was dead, they wouldn't be hovering over him, caring for him. They'd stop treating him. Cover his face.

  My mother paced near the fireplace, one hand over her mouth, watching as my father and Dr. Zsoldos conferred in hushed tones over the package that Dad had retrieved from the garage.

  Some decision must have been reached, because Dr. Zsol­dos retrieved a knife—a scalpel?—from a black bag. Is he going to operate on Lucius? On our table?

  I almost turned away, too sickened to watch, but no, the Hungarian quack didn't slice into Lucius. He simply cut the strings that bound the package and tore open the paper. He lifted out the contents, cradling it as if he was delivering a baby—a wobbly, slippery baby that almost escaped his grasp. What in the world?

  I leaned closer, pressing my face against the crack and fight­ing to control my breathing so I wouldn't be caught. No one was focused on the door, though. Mom, Dad, and Dr. Zsoldos were all staring at that. . . thing in Dr. Zsoldos's hands. It looked like . . . what? Some sort of pouch? Made of a material I couldn't identify. Something pliable, though, because the package slipped around in Dr. Zsoldos's grasp, like Jell-O in a plastic bag.

  "We should have realized he'd have this, hidden," Dr. Zsol­dos whispered, nodding so his white beard bobbed. "Of course he would."

  "Yes," Mom agreed, moving forward now, toward Lucius. "Of course. We should have known." At a nod from Dad, they both slid their forearms under Lucius's shoulders and gently lifted him, almost to a seated position. Lucius made a sound then, half a moan of pain, half the roar of an angry, injured lion. My damp fingers slipped off the doorknob at that sound. It wasn't quite human and not quite animal. But it was com­pletely chilling, reverberating off the walls.

  I wiped my hands on my riding breeches, squinting harder at the scene in front of me.

  Dr. Zsoldos leaned close to his patient, holding out the pouch like an offering in front of Lucius's face. The firelight glinted off the doctor's half-moon eyeglasses, and he smiled a little as he urged, softly, "Drink, Lucius. Drink."

  The patient didn't respond. Lucius's head lolled sideways, and Dad shifted to catch him, steadying him.

  Dr. Zsoldos hesitated, then grasped the scalpel again, using it to pierce the pouch, right under Lucius's nose. The eyes that I feared had been extinguished fluttered open, and I yelped then.

  Lucius's eyes, always dark, were pure black now. Deep, deep ebony, as though the pupils had consumed the irises and most of the whites, too. I'd never seen eyes like that before. You couldn't look away from them.

  He opened his mouth and his teeth . . . they'd changed again, too.

  My parents must have heard my cry, but it was too late. What was happening was happening, and they, too, were trans­fixed as Lucius tilted his head, sinking his fangs into that pouch, drinking wearily but with obvious hunger. A bit of liq­uid dribbled down his chin and ran across his chest. Dark liq­uid. Thick liquid. I'd seen liquid just like that before, not too many hours ago, staining that same chest.

  NO.

  I closed my eyes, disbelieving. S
haking my head, I tried to think straight. To banish the image of what I thought I'd seen. What I was fairly sure I'd seen.

  There was a smell, too. A pungent odor that I'd never smelled before. Well, I'd smelled it faintly before, but now . . . now it was so strong. And getting stronger. I opened my eyes and forced myself to watch again. That aroma—it wasn't like I was even sensing it with my nose. I felt it, somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach, or in the farthest reaches of that prim­itive part of the brain that we'd talked about in biology class. The part that controlled sex and aggression and . . . pleasure?

  Lucius pulled himself more upright, supporting himself on one elbow, still drinking lustily, like he couldn't get enough. Fi­nally, though, there was nothing left. The bag was empty. Lu­cius sort of fell back with a moan that managed, somehow, to convey both raw agony and pure satisfaction, and Dad grabbed his bare shoulders just in time, easing him onto his back again.

  "Rest, Lucius," Dad urged. Mom stepped in with a cloth to wipe his chest, where the blood had spilled on him. . . .

  Blood. He was drinking blood.

  I squeezed my eyes shut again, more tightly this time. Something strange happened then, because I was obviously crouched on a solid, wooden floor, which could not move, and yet it started pitching and whirling under my feet. The whole house was heaving around me, and even when I opened my eyes, trying to get my bearings, it was only to feel my eyes spin of their own accord toward the ceiling, which faded away like a movie screen at the end of the film.

  I awoke later that same night in my own bed, dressed in my flannel pajamas, but confused and disoriented, as if I'd sud­denly found myself in a foreign country, as opposed to my own bedroom. It was still dark. I lay as still as possible, eyes open, just in case the room started lurching and the ceiling started to fade again.

  The house didn't shift, though, even as I replayed, in vivid detail, everything I'd seen. Everything I'd felt.

  I'd seen Lucius drink blood. Or had I? I had been woozy. Confused. And that smell. . . Maybe Dr. Zsoldos had dosed Lucius with some sort of heady Romanian liquor or potion or something. Maybe I'd misunderstood, in my panic and my fear.

  But the one thing I couldn't explain away was what I'd felt when I'd actually believed Lucius was dead.

  Grief. The deepest grief I could imagine. Like a jagged hole ripped in my soul.

  That. . . that was the part that really had me freaked. So freaked, in fact, that I slipped downstairs again in the middle of the night, creeping into the dining room. The fire had been stoked back up, and Lucius was still on his back on the table, but there was a pillow under his head now. A warmer blanket had been placed over the sheet, too, covering him from shoul­ders to toes. My dad was still in the room, dozing in the rock­ing chair, snoring lightly, but Mom was gone, and Dr. Zsoldos was gone, and his bag, and the pouch I'd probably dreamed. . . .

  I stole up close to Lucius's face. There were no traces of red on his lips, no stain down his chin, no hint of a change in his mouth. Just a pale, injured, now-familiar face. As I watched him, he must have sensed a presence, or maybe he dreamed, be­cause he shifted slightly, and his hand dropped off the table. The position looked uncomfortable, so after waiting a moment to see if he would move again, I gently grasped his wrist and re­placed it on the table. In spite of the blanket and the fire crack­ling just a few feet away, his skin was so cool to the touch . . . cold, actually. He was always so cold. My fingers slipped down, lacing with Lucius's for just a moment, to offer him some com­fort or warmth.

  He was alive.

  I started weeping then, as soundlessly as possible, desperate not to wake Dad. I just let the tears run down my face, drip­ping onto our clasped hands. Lucius drove me insane. He was insane. But no matter. I didn't want to feel that sense of pro­found loss again. Never.

  I hiccuped a sob, unable to hold it back. At the sound, Dad grunted, the huge snort of someone trying to sleep in a hard chair, and I was afraid he might wake up, so I released Lucius's hand, wiped my face with my sleeve, and returned to my room again. It was almost dawn by then, anyway.

  Chapter 24

  DEAR UNCLE VASILE,

  It is with profound regret—and no small measure of appre­hension regarding your reaction—that I write to inform you that I have encountered a small accident with a horse I purchased "online."

  Oh, how you would have appreciated Hell's Belle. Such a terrible, awesome, feral creature. Black from her forelock to her hooves and, needless to say, the very core of her being. Would I have desired anything less?

  Returning to the narrative, though. My deliciously vicious mare dealt me an admirable thrashing—for which I absolve her completely. The result was a broken leg, a few cracked ribs, bit of a gaping hole in one lung. Nothing I haven't survived before at the hands of family. But of course, I'm afraid I shall be on my back for at least a week or so.

  I write less in hopes of gaining your sympathy . . . (Oh, that's a rich thought, isn't it? You, Vasile, getting weepy over someone's well-being. I really would laugh out loud at that, if doing so wouldn't make me cough up more blood.) No, I put pen to paper more in the interest of giving the Packwoods their just due, as I have certainly never been spare with them in terms of criticism. (Recall my missive following that first lentil casserole? I cringe a bit, to recall. There's never really a need to resort to expletives.)

  In this crisis, however, much to their credit, Ned and Dara rose to the occasion, immediately grasping the fact that taking an undead individual to the hospital would have been a decidedly unfortunate move. (How many of our modern brethren have been inconveniently lodged in basement morgues for days—and even stone mausoleums for years—due to a lack of what humans call "vital signs"?)

  But as usual, my musings wander. Returning to my point, perhaps we have been unjustly harsh regarding the Packwoods. They showed great insight, and, more importantly, risked them­selves for me. I almost wish that I could replace their hideous folk dolls, as a gesture of my gratitude. Could you, perhaps, have one of the local women fashion some crude poppet out of, say, a wooden spool and some scraps of wool? Nothing fancy. Aesthetic standards for this particular collection were not high, believe me. "Ugly" and "ill-crafted" seem to have been the key criteria.

  As for Antanasia . . . Vasile, what can I say? She responded to my accident with the valor, will, and fearlessness of a true vampire princess. And yet, a princess possessed of a kind heart. What, we must ask ourselves, would this mean for her in our world?

  Vasile, few are the times when I would claim to have greater experience than you, regarding any subject. You know that I am humbled before your authority. But I will risk addressing you with some authority here, myself, as one who has spent considerable time now in intimate contact with humans.

  (No doubt you already grow angry at my impertinence— believe me, I can feel the sting of your hand across my face, even several thousand miles away—but I must continue.)

  Living as you have in our castle, isolated high in the Carpathi­ans, you have had little contact with those outside our race. You know only the vampire way—the Vladescu way. The way of blood and violence and the harsh scrabble for survival. The end­less fight for dominance.

  You have never seen Ned Packwood crouched above a box full of squirming kittens, nourishing them with an eyedropper, for god's sake—when our people would have thrown the shivering strays out into the cold, watched them carried off by the circling birds of prey, with no regret. Nay, with a sense of satisfaction for the hawk that would not go hungry that night.

  You have never felt Dara Packwood's trembling hand search-ing for your pulse as you lay prostrate—vulnerable!—half naked, injured, on a plank table.

  What would one of our kind have done, Vasile? If Dara had been a Dragomir, not a Packwood, would she not have been tempted, at least, to take down the rival prince in that opportune moment? Yet she feared for my life.

  This—this is how Antanasia was raised. She is not just an American, but
a Packwood. Not a Dragomir. She has been coddled with kittens and kindness and soft touches. Nourished with pale, limp "tofu" in lieu of the blood-soaked spoils of a slaughter.

  And you didn't hear her cry, Vasile. You didn't feel her grief, as I did, when she thought I was destroyed. . . . It was palpable to me, Vasile. It tore through her.

  Antanasia—no, Jessica—is soft, Vasile. Soft. Her heart is so tender that she could not help but mourn even me—a man whom she can barely abide.

  Her enemies—and we know, as a princess, she would have them, even in peacetime—would smell that weakness, just as I sensed her grief. At some point, another female would rise up, thirsty for power, hungry to take Jessica's place. Is that not the way of our world? And when confronted, at the moment of truth, Jessica would falter, just for a split second, not sure if she could bear to waste a life—and she would be lost. Even I could not protect her at all times.