by Minda Webber
Hart was breathing as hard as I was when he spoke somewhere behind me. “I got one in the chest with a broken broom stick. He won’t be coming after us either.”
“Great work,” Bea said as she huffed and puffed. We came off the stairs and into a little courtyard of a hotel that was bathed in deep shadows. Automatically, we steered clear and ended up among a large crowd of tourists. Many of the tourists were dressed up in Halloween costumes even though Halloween was six days away. We all slowed down as Dagan moved closer to me and grabbed my hand.
“Start rubbing against the tourists. We’ll get our scent on different tourists and confuse the werewolves.” It was a great suggestion. The tourists were going in different directions and the werewolves would have to check all the directions out if they wanted to find us.
“We’ve got to get out of here and someplace safe,” Debbs said. “We’re all in danger, no thanks to you.” She said the last glaring at Dagan. “We could all get killed!”
“Wait a minute, Debbs, how do you know they were after Dagan?” I asked anger evident in my tone.
“Because since we’ve met him, we’ve been attacked by ghouls, vampires and now werewolves! Why would a pack of werewolves attack us? We’re nothing to them, but now Dracula’s spawn here is a big deal. He could be the bartering coins for favors owed by Dracula if they captured him or they could slaughter him for something his grandfather did.”
I started to say something snotty back, but Dagan stopped me. “She’s right V.J. It’s me they’re after and I’ve put all of you in danger. It isn’t right. You guys need to just go and leave me here to lead them off.”
“No,” I said as I clutched his hand to mine. “I’m not leaving you to a werewolf’s mercy.” Especially not this close to a full moon. Werewolves had a tendency to get moonstruck and not the love kind. More like the eat-your-face kind of lunar madness.
“No way,” Hart replied as he shook his head. “You’ve saved us all last night and already again tonight you’ve kept us safe. We don’t leave our friends for wolf bait.”
I looked over at Hart and never have I felt more proud of my friend. I mean, we aren’t the Marines or anything, but still it had always been all of us together. We would never leave any one of us to suffer a fate worse than death or whatever. “My heroes,” I said and smiled though my eyes were misty.
“No, I’m not letting you guys get in trouble for me. You could get killed!” Dagan was adamant.
“It doesn’t really matter now,” Bea said reasonably. “We’re with you and they are going to go after us even if we split up just to see if we know where you are. We stick together. United we stand. Divided we fall. Lincoln said it best.”
Yep, that was my best friend Bea bringing freedom and liberty into our duel with werewolves, along with the Gettysburg Address. She was an original.
“All right, let’s just go. If we keep walking so slowly, they’ll get us for sure.” Debbs glanced back at me and Dagan and shook her head. “I don’t intend to be a werewolf’s dinner and I sure don’t intend to turn into one. So come up with a plan somebody and fast!”
Amazingly, Dagan did just that after he spotted a sign in the distance, Howl at the Moon. It was a favorite hangout for shapeshifters and ghosts. My dad liked to go there and sing along with the piano player, so did my mom. “We’ll go there.”
“Howl at the Moon, are you crazy?” Debbs shouted. She’d gone with my family to eat at the bar before. Sometimes her parents came along and they embarrassed us when the older guys tried to hit on us. Our moms called us their babies and Debbs’ dad would pull out a stake, not the steak which he usually ate, but a good ten inch stake. Then he’d stare at the guys. All the while my dad would talk about reanimating flesh and study the guys like he was trying to figure out what they looked like without their skin. Needless to say, the guys scattered like leaves in a hurricane and didn’t come back to flirt with us.
“Probably crazy,” Dagan said as he grinned. “But it’s the one place they won’t expect us to be.”
“That’s so bogus, it’s brilliant,” Bea said, slapping him on his arm. “Way to go. Hide within the enemy’s fortress.”
“They’ll scent us,” Debbs argued. “Besides, we’d just get trapped inside.”
“Look,” Dagan said. “I’m sure they’ll be having a Halloween costume contest for best costume this close to October thirty-first. We’ll buy some costumes off some drunk tourists and hide in plain sight under their very noses. Then, we’ll walk off with a large group of people acting like we’re part of their group.”
“It could work if it wasn’t the furry paranormal after us,” Debbs argued, “but they’ll still smell us.”
“Tonight is Thursday night. Thursday night is Chicken Curry,” Dagan began, and didn’t finish when Debbs and I started laughing. Dagan was very clever; he must have inherited his slyness from Dracula. He also was very strong, fought like a warrior and had a courage that had caused him to risk his life for our own, most of us near-strangers to him. He really was my hero and how many girls could say that about the vampire they liked.
“What?” Bea asked, perplexed. “Our lives are in danger and ya’ll are talking about food and I don’t like not getting the joke.”
“Curry will mask the scent. We’ll put it on us,” Debbs replied. “Curry throws off the scent.”
My, oh my. “We’re going to be saved by Chicken Curry.” Wait until I tell my dad. He’d get a kick out of that. On second thought, maybe I’d wait a few years and tell him when I was at college or something and he couldn’t ground me for the rest of high school.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
People were howling inside Howl at the Moon, along with a few vampires and shapeshifters. It was the usual Thursday night. Some were singing along with the piano players, while others were strutting around in their Halloween costumes. Right before we entered, Dagan had bought costumes for us off some tourists. They hesitated to part with their costumes until Dagan offered an outrageous price for them. They were worth it as far as I was concerned. He looked hot dressed as Ironman, while I got to be a witch complete with black wig, which covered up my red hair.
Once inside Dagan hurried back to the kitchens to get some curry while Hart, Debbs and Bea bartered and begged for costumes. They finally ended up with a large sheet-like thing for Hart to be a ghost. Debbs got to be a pirate, while Bea’s costume was the most original of them all. She bought a purple t-shirt, purple balloons and a purple mask with tiny purple balloons tied on to it. She was the Fruit of the Loom grapes. Hart and I laughed so hard when we saw her in her purple splendor that our sides ached. Bea took it in stride and hammed it up, prancing around in her purple balloons. Even Debbs cracked up and Dagan, trying to be polite, managed to hold back the really loud chuckles.
Debbs wasn’t as polite, managing to have a few words with me about Dracula’s grandson, while he was getting the curry. “You really, really like him and he really likes you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m surprised I guess. I would think I’d be more to his taste,” Debbs added without a hint of discomposure.
I stared at her. It was true Debbs had always attracted the opposite sex and had more boyfriends then I ever had, but I had my fair share who liked me and not her. Frankly, Dagan wasn’t interested in her. Whether he just liked me better or he couldn’t bring home a Van Helsing as a girlfriend to his grandfather, I didn’t know and didn’t care. Well, not too much.
“What, did the conceit bug bite you again?” I asked, wanting to prick her vanity. I knew she thought he was hot, but in a way my feelings were stung by her assumptions.
She had the grace to look embarrassed for a moment. “I just meant that the Van Helsings and Draculas run in the same monster circles. I understand him better than you ever will. He’s a vampire and even worse, one of Dracula’s direct line. You don’t want to get hooked up with a blood sucker. It’s bad news. He’s like going to live forever and you’re not. He lives i
n Europe and you don’t. He drains people’s blood to live and you don’t even like tomato juice.”
I held up my hand and shook my head. “No, he doesn’t. Even on his first night, he didn’t drain anybody. Tonight he’s just had packaged blood from my dad’s lab. He’s one of the good guys.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re losing your head over a vampire prince, or losing your neck is more like it, and you’re my best friend! I kill them V.J.. You want to kiss them! It’s stupid!”
“You need to chill. He’s great and sweet and I’m kind of crazy about him.” Notice I did not tell her about the kisses or that there might be a slight possibility that I was falling in love with the undead. I thought I’d save that juicy tidbit.
Maybe next year.
She started to continue on with the argument, but Dagan brought the curry and she grew quiet and kept shooting him dark glaring looks. After we rubbed ourselves down with curry we hung out long enough to eat, since running for our lives from werewolves tended to make my gang hungry. Besides the spicy chicken, they had great barbeque. As we ate, we all kept our eyes on the doors looking for werewolves looking for us.
After about twenty minutes, two humans entered. At least they looked human from far off. But up close, their eyes were wolf amber and carefully checking out the room. We split up and mingled with the crowd, hoping to totally throw them off track. The two shapeshifters made a circle of the room lifting their heads and sniffing. A couple of times they seemed to catch our scent, but after checking a particular person out, they shook their heads and continued their surveillance.
Behind me I felt Dagan’s hand grab mine as he whispered to me. “Let’s go out with that group there.”
I had looked back to glance at him and then noted where his eyes had stopped. I looked back at a crowd of twelve or thirteen people. The large group of tourists was about to leave. They were singing, happy and had a few drinks. I signaled Debbs who was standing by Bea and they made their way to us as Dagan and I reached the leaving tourists and stepped into the middle of them. Spying Hart by the door, he went on out by himself first. We soon followed.
Outside we acted like we were part of the crowd as Dagan nudged me. “There’s another one of the wolves that was chasing us.” The man was standing off in the shadows, in half-man half-wolf form. “Go up to the front, Bea. Act like your date is Hart.”
She looked scared but she grabbed Hart’s hand and they weaved their way to the front of the group. I pushed Dagan closer into the tight circle of the middle, following behind him. Being in her Van Helsing protective mode, Debbs brought up the rear.
I glanced back at the shadows where the wolf was and could tell he was sniffing the air. Sweat began to run down the partial mask on my face and I could feel it sticky and hot between my shoulder blades.
“And who are…” one of the tourists began to ask, but I quickly cut them off.
“Wasn’t that fun. I just loved all the singing we did.”
Evidently, the tourist had a bunch to drink. He didn’t ask anything else and turned back to the person he was speaking with. I breathed a sigh of relief as we put some distance between us and the wolf-man still standing back in the shadowy darkness. We were nearing the stairs that led up to parking when I heard a short howl. Glancing back I saw the wolf-man following our trail, alerting his furry friends that he had caught our scent.
“Go,” Dagan said as he grabbed me, pushing me out of the tight circle of people, and started running. Up ahead Bea and Hart had reached the top of the stairs. “Get the SUV,” Dagan ordered. He lifted me and practically threw me to the top of the stairs. Swiftly, he reached back into the surprised crowd of tourists, grabbed Debbs by her pirate shirt and ran up the steps with her. Once again we were being hunted. Only we didn’t know how many or where they were.
“Hurry, Dagan, you can get to the car faster, get the keys from Bea and meet us back here,” I said, as he caught up to me with Debbs a few feet behind him.
“I won’t leave you.”
“You’ve got to or we’re going to go down and soon!” My heart was pounding in my chest and I could feel the sweat running into my eyes. I yanked the mask off as Dagan took off at a speed that an Olympic gold medalist would admire, running full out for the SUV.
“He’s leaving us to rot!” Debbs shouted as she came up beside me.
“He’s getting the car and driving back to us,” I replied, panting.
“Sure he is.” Debbs shook her head at me. “I can’t believe you’re falling for his lines.”
“Debbs, we are going to get either eaten by werewolves, turned into the terminally furry or worse. I can hardly breathe and I don’t have time to fight with you about him! Leave it alone!”
She did. In fact she ran harder and left me behind. Now, I was the one in the back of beyond, with the menacing dark shadows, howls and werewolves hot on my trail.
I really needed to start running again after cheerleading practice. I could swear I felt the hot breath of something with really stinky breath when I saw the headlights of Bea’s SUV.
All of the gang ran across the street and headed for the SUV as it speeded up and passed by everyone but me. It was heading straight for me and I had a few moments of doubts. Surely my boyfriend wasn’t out to kill me? Then I realized what he was doing.
I leapt to the side as the SUV speeded up some more and hit the object behind me. I glanced back and saw the werewolf go head over heels in the air and land with a very heavy impact on the damp street.
Another wolf came up and nuzzled his neck. This one was in total wolf form. Three other half-men and half-wolves were leaping out of the darkness. One actually got hold of Bea and she screamed bloody murder as I slowed down to go back and face the werewolf in his den. Hart was faster. He hit him in the face with a trashcan lid and the wolf-man flew backward.
“I was just in time. He almost got you,” Dagan said as he threw open the door. I leapt into the SUV followed by the rest of the gang. He leaned over and kissed me. Hard and quick.
“That was some running, Dagan,” Hart said, breathing hard. “Jason would be impressed. He’s in track.”
“Vampire powers,” Debbs explained as she frowned; glancing from me to Dagan and back to me again. She really didn’t like the kiss between us. “Hurry up and get us out of here, Dracula, before they can follow us home.”
Dagan did just that. We hit IH-35 in high gear and were gone. After dropping an irritated Debbs at home, we picked up Hart’s pickup at Bea’s house, where he had left it earlier in the evening.
Then Hart drove Dagan and me to my house. Dagan was going to Hart’s house, since my mother was home from Dallas and she had the ears of a wolf; well not really the ears. She was all human and not one of my father’s creations, but she had excellent hearing. I know you’ve probably heard that Victor Frankenstein created the Frankenstein Bride, but that was my great, great grandfather and not my father.
Anyway, Dagan was going to stay with Hart tonight. Hart’s uncle was out at his favorite bar and probably would get in late and drunk, never noticing that Hart had an overnight guest. Poor Hart. His uncle got really drunk at least twice a week-usually on the weekends, but not always. Hart hated it the most when his uncle came to the football games drunk and made a fool of himself. But we stood by Hart on those occasions and nobody picked on him about his uncle then. Later, he might hear a few rude comments about his uncle, but not many since Hart was now a big boy and picking on him was like picking on a small grizzly.
Hart parked two houses down from my house so that Dagan and I could talk before taking me home. We stood outside the pickup at the back. Dagan put his arms around me and hugged me tightly. It felt so good to be held close to him. “Did I tell you how pretty you look tonight?”
“At the café when I ate supper.” My heart sped up beating a hard pitter-patter in my chest. We had talked of many things while Dagan had watched me eat, enjoying my pleasure in the pizza. I’d told
him about making green pancakes for my parents anniversary and how I had made a mistake and put too much baking soda in them. After my family had eaten, we’d left the dishes in the sink for a while with a few pieces of pancake left. Later, when we went back to put the dishes in the dishwasher, the leftover pancake pieces had expanded to three times their size. We realized this about the time our stomachs were aching, feeling as if we’d all swallowed small watermelons.
I learned that Dagan rode horses, English style with the English saddle. He owned two horses, both of Arab stock, one solid white and the other black with a whitish-gray forelock. I found out his birthday was March 16th and he’d just graduated from high school last year and was taking a year off before he went to Oxford. He wanted to explore the world and have fun. He was eighteen. He discovered my favorite pets were cats. And my favorite cat was the one I had now. We’d had him for eight years and he loved to bring things home to me, from rats, to puzzle pieces to police crime scene tape. He’d drop them at my feet and meow the whole time.
“Did I happen to mention how good you smell?” He nuzzled my neck. “I really like you, V.J. More than any other girl I’ve known.”
“Oh Dagan,” I said, sighing. “You make my heart smile.”
“I want you to be my girlfriend. No matter what happens or how this turns out, I want to get to know you better. I want to meet your parents and I want you to meet my mom and grandfather. I want you to come visit me at our house in London. My family will like you.”
Meeting the parents was serious stuff and visiting London was even better. Maybe he was as crazy about me as I was about him. I wished I could ask, but I was afraid it would scare him off, so I didn’t. I laid my head against his chest, feeling safe and warm. “My parents would like you too. My dad will have a dozen questions and so will my little sisters and little brother.” I sighed. “They’ll drive you crazy, especially Frankie.”
“As soon as this mess is cleaned up and everything’s okay we’ll have a regular date. How’d you like that? We’ll go someplace special.”
