by Minda Webber
“Any place is okay with me as long as I’m with you.” I could sit in a room full of dirty gym socks and be happy playing checkers if Dagan were with me. And I hated checkers ever since my dad made me play with my crazy great grandmother, who would put the checkers in her mouth to hide them. Then take them out when it came time to crown the king.
“Well, I know I’d like you to go to the Halloween Dance at my school next Friday, if we aren’t eaten before then. It’s kind of a big deal.”
“You got it.” His smile made the butterflies in my stomach do a salsa. “Costume?”
“Oh yeah.” I had a date for the Halloween dance. Finally! And what a date.
Dagan seemed to think a second. “Maybe I’ll go as a vampire.”
“How original,” I teased. “I’ll go as a Frankenstein.” We both laughed.
“Hey, you know something…I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world. You’ve made me laugh again and after getting killed by an insect, I didn’t think that would be possible,” he said as he hugged me tightly like he would never let me go. We just held each other for a bit as the stars twinkled in the sky and the branches of the trees rattled in the wind. Other boys had held me, but I’d never felt like this. Dagan excited me, stirred me and completed me.
“You are so special and I put you and your friends in danger again tonight. I can’t do that anymore. I don’t want to see you hurt. If something happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
I reached up and put my hand against his face as I answered him. “Dagan, it’s great that you don’t want us to get hurt. Noble and all that, but we’re already in this, all of us. The vampires, ghouls and werewolves have our scent. If you went it alone they would still track us and torture us or worse to get information about you. United we stand together, just like Bea said earlier.” Bea had once again used the Lincoln speech on him while we were driving home, yet Dagan had persisted. He had courageously continued to argue about going off on his own. Of course, Debbs had agreed with him, while I had argued too. I couldn’t let him go off on his own against a small army of monsters. “It’s too late now.”
He looked miserable. “I never meant to get you into trouble.” He leaned his forehead against mine.
“Oh heck, I’m always in trouble.”
He laughed.
“Well, I am. My dad says my middle name is trouble. I’ve been getting into monster scrapes since I was a little kid. Once, when the Monster Fair came to town, I opened and got in the cage with three gremlins.”
“How old were you?”
“Around four.”
“You could have been eaten,” he said aghast.
“I know.” Gremlins were about three feet tall and had nasty little teeth like piranha. They were considered one of the most dangerous of wild species because they attacked in packs and were very fast, with razor-sharp teeth. “But they liked me, I guess or else I didn’t show any fear and I started grooming them, so they left me alone. My parents had a heart attack, but I was all right. Not even one little bite.”
I could feel his shoulders shaking with laughter. I smiled.
“I bet your parents have gray hair.”
“Oh yeah.” They did. “My mom always says it’s my fault that her hair is growing gray at forty-one. So see, I started out young in trouble. This monster mess isn’t your fault.”
He pulled back from me and leaned down and kissed me tenderly. I loved how soft his lips were and the way he made my toes curl when his tongue entered my mouth searching gently. We kissed for a few minutes until he drew back, breathing hard.
“V.J, promise me you won’t tell your friends what I’m going to tell you.”
I nodded even though I didn’t like keeping secrets from my best friends. But, still, this was my Dagan asking.
“I’m going to call my grandfather tonight. I can’t let you get hurt.”
“But I thought you thought it might be a trap for him?”
“It still might, but he’s way older and wiser than I am, and I need his help.”
“You’re doing this for me,” I said, overwhelmed that he cared enough about me to endanger his grandfather, the Prince of Darkness. “You don’t have to do that. We’ll figure this out.”
“Will we?” He asked, his voice terse with anger. “It seems we’ve got half the supernatural world after us and we don’t know why. I need resources to get answers, resources my grandfather can summon with a snap of his fingers.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him with my heart in the kiss. He was right. His grandfather would find out things much faster than we could since he was plugged into the paranormal community in a hundred different ways.
Hart stuck his head out the window. “Hey you lovebirds, we’ve got to get going. Your curfew time is in two minutes.” He pointed to the clock in the pickup.
Dagan leaned down and gave me another quick kiss. “Take care.”
“You too. Don’t forget I expect to see you at the game tomorrow night.” We had already discussed him going to the game in disguise. I wanted him to see me cheerleading. I know. Shallow, right? But I was a great cheerleader and I wanted my boyfriend watching me, even if werewolves were on our tails, vampires on our trails and ghouls had our scent. I wanted a little bit of normal before the world turned crazy again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I grabbed something to eat when I got inside the kitchen. My heart was still fluttering in my chest from Dagan’s kiss. Oddly, his kisses made me hungry or I guess it could have been the wild chase through the River Walk.
Wistfully, I sighed as I said hello to my family and then went up to my bedroom and called Debbs.
Her tone was cold. “I didn’t know if you’d call or not,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I asked, hating that she sounded like I was a vampire she was about to dispatch.
“I figured you’d be too busy with your vampire boyfriend.”
I knew Debbs liked to shake things up, especially vampires and cemetery dust. But I didn’t appreciate her tone or her words. “Debbs, come on, don’t be like this. Let’s work it out.” I hated being on the bad side of Debbs. We were so close, knowing everything about each other, confiding in each other, and most of the time, whole-heartedly agreeing with the way we saw our world. I’d been there for her first big heartbreak when Ryan Polanski had broken her heart in eighth grade by kissing Tiffie Bogs. I was there when she did her first solo staking on a vampire. She was there when I reanimated my first frog and got my first gold-plated shovel for Christmas. She’d held my hand when I’d cried over breaking up with Jason. She was hind-catcher to my pitching in softball and we’d both made the cheerleading squad together.
“I didn’t plan on this, you know.”
I could hear her take a deep breath before she answered me. “I know you didn’t do this purposefully.”
“I can’t help how I feel, and if you actually let yourself, you’d like him too.”
“V.J, he’s a vampire! He’s the big, bad undead and he’s related to the scourge of Van Helsings everywhere.”
She was really upset, I could tell. I felt bad for both of us. Still, I couldn’t help how I felt about Dagan. “I know that.”
“He’s kin to Dracula!”
“Yep.” She was more upset than I first thought, but she was just going to have to get it over it, because sometimes that’s just the way the graveyard dirt crumbled.
“There’s all kind of problems with hanging with a vampire. They’re the undead, not alive like us. They have fangs and bloodlust and you could get hurt really bad. You could even be turned if things got too hot to handle.”
“Things never get too hot to handle with me and you know it. I’m not going to do something stupid like get myself turned,” I argued. She was really hurting my feelings. “Besides, I dated that vampire Glen Estes a couple of times my sophomore year and all you did was give me one tiny lecture. Not to mention I’m a Frankenstein. A pretty face doesn’t turn my he
ad. I don’t get bespelled by gazing into a vampire’s eyes.”
“You weren’t crazy about Glen, you barely even thought he was cute,” she argued. “But this is different. He’s different, he’s a direct descendant of the King of Cruel. You know my family has been fighting Dracula for way over a century. They are bad news. The baddest of the bad-asses of vampire-kind.”
“Dagan is not his grandfather. Come on, Debbs, help me out here. You’re tough, but you’ve always been fair. And don’t forget that Dagan has saved your life and mine a few times now. In fact, he saved us all tonight and you didn’t even thank him.”
“We wouldn’t be in this mess but for him.”
“That’s not fair and you know it. He can’t help the fact that everyone is after him,” I replied, trying to get her to see my logic, but being a Van Helsing, she had to see her own point of view first and foremost. The Van Helsings were a hard-headed lot, but then they had to be since they sometimes had to head butt vampires when fighting with them or when a piece of a crypt fell on their heads.
“Wake up and smell the Starbucks. Everybody is always after the Dracula clan.” She sounded exasperated. “We are in a supernatural mess that I can’t even tell my parents about. Why? Because of how much trouble I would get in for not telling them the first night about opening Dracula’s grandson’s grave. You do realize I should have told my mom and then helped my family capture him. Do you know what we could do if we held Dagan? What we could demand of the Prince of Darkness?”
I felt like I had been hit with a train. I finally got it. It was more than who Dagan was and him being a vampire. It was about family honor and not just him liking me instead of her. “You think you’ve betrayed them?”
I heard her long sigh, filled with misery. “Oh Debbs, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what you were going through.” I didn’t know what to say. Van Helsing family loyalty was everything to them, well everything, when you took out the equation of slaying vampires.
“I just know how I feel about Dagan and I also know how hard this is for you. Believe me, I’ve never felt this way about anybody before. He makes me feel special and beautiful and you know I’m not that pretty. But Dagan makes me feel that way. And I know you’re miserable because you didn’t tell your mom. But we all agreed it was for the best to not let her know what a mess we’d gotten into.” It was much more of a mess than we’d originally thought, but Dracula would soon clear it up, I figured. Of course, I couldn’t tell Debbs that because of my promise to Dagan.
“Dagan isn’t like his granddad. He’s a really good vampire, you know that. You’ve been around too many of them not to know it. Admit it. Dagan’s sweet. I see him Debbs, I really see him and what I see I admire.”
The silence between us seemed to stretch forever.
“Come on Debbs, help me out here please.”
I heard her swallow hard and her voice was slight when she answered me. “He’s okay.”
“Think, if you had told your family and in capturing Dagan they killed him, how would you feel? Dagan saved your life. Dagan isn’t evil in any way. It would have bothered you.” And it would have, because I knew Debbs like I knew my sisters. Fairness counted a great deal to her as well as debts. “You’re indebted to Dagan for saving your life.”
“I know,” she said testily. “That’s why I didn’t tell my mom about him. He saved us more than once, so I owe him and I hate it. And I hate that you’re crazy about him!”
I understood. Family loyalty and debts owed were big on the Van Helsing list. I imagine her friendship to me had tipped the scales and kept her quiet about Dagan. “I don’t deserve a best friend like you, you know.” I meant it. I was humbled.
“I know.”
“I love you forever,” I said, glad to note that her voice was now devoid of bitterness.
“Yeah, you too. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
“What about Dagan and me?” I hated to ask, but I had to know.
“I guess you have a vampire for a boyfriend. I’m not crazy about it, but I’ll live. Heck, I hope we all live with all the supernatural stuff after us.”
“We’ll be okay. He’s got a plan.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” she said, grouchily.
“Because you like coming up with the tough monster plans,” I said, teasing her with the truth. “I won’t forget what a good friend I have. I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.” She hung up the phone and I felt better. We were on better footing. She didn’t like that she had keep a secret from her family about Dagan and she didn’t like that I was crazy about him. BFF meant she was going to support me because she was my best friend. That’s what made best friends so special-they liked you and supported you even when they didn’t.
I slept well that night and the ride to school was rather anticlimactic. Debbs and I didn’t talk about Dagan much, mostly about the monsters after us and the game tonight. Bea texted me during third period to let me know that she had found out who had been spying on us in the library the other day. I texted Debbs and let her know as well.
The three of us ended up at the library at lunch, trying to find Kim Hernandez, a flunky of Carol and Robbie. We had to know if she was the one that had told them about where we were going the night we robbed Dagan’s grave. We had heard that she was in the library working on a research paper for history that day. “There she is,” Debbs said, spotting Kim standing over by the reference section.
We circled Kim and began the questioning. Within seconds, she broke. So much for her rep of being big and bad and scary if you crossed her. She had overheard us and told Carol about where we were going that night. Kim swore she didn’t know what they were going to do, but admitted that later they had said they’d hired a necromancer to call the ghouls. Our suspicions were confirmed.
Debbs was furious and threatened to bury Kim in mud or a crypt if she ever spied on us again. Bea told Kim that she would invent some kind of hair spray to use on Kim to turn her hair permanently green. Kim usually wore a red steak in her hair, but I didn’t think she’d like to wear her hair green all the time. Kim appeared dutifully impressed with the threats.
I gave Kim my best dirty look and hinted that I might invent a special boyfriend for her, with lots and lots of nuts and bolts and scaly skin. Kim almost ran from the library, thrilled to escape with her scalp intact.
“She’s going to tell Carol and Robbie that she told us about spying on us,” Debbs said sagely.
“Yep,” I agreed.
“What are we going to do about Carol and Robbie? Their attacks on us are getting vicious. You two could have been killed.” Bea was shaking her head.
Our arch enemies weren’t just playing dirty, they were playing lethal now. At prom last year, they had thrown water balloons filled with stinking swamp water on us just as we entered the dance with our dates. In spite of spending two weeks shopping for our perfect dresses, we’d had to go home and change. We’d retaliated by recording them making out with their boyfriends and playing it over the intercom at school the next week.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “We’ve got to do something or it will just get worse. But we can’t do any black magic on them.” My dad would kill me if I used black magic on anyone, not to mention what my mother would do. Frankensteins didn’t use the black arts in any form or fashion. Although my mom was pretty good in the culinary arts and my dad in the science-invention arts, while Roxie was a whiz at art-arts. She could paint like Van Gogh.
“No black magic,” Debbs said wistfully. The Van Helsings didn’t use it either. Black magic changed a person, scarred or warped a soul. “But if anyone deserves it, it’s those bullies.”
“Well, I’ll just have to invent something then,” Bea said happily, relishing what she could do with a chemistry set.
Both Debbs and I agreed. “Besides, we’ve got too much on our plate right now to have to deal with the Wicked Witches of Hawley High right now and a fo
otball game tonight to get ready for,” I added as a book from the reference section went flying off the shelf and landed at my feet. Another book did the same and we all laughed.
“Okay Coleridge, we know you’re here,” I said. Coleridge was the library’s resident ghost. He really wasn’t Samuel Taylor Coleridge, just a dead librarian who had loved the works of Coleridge and would materialize every now and then to see how the library was doing, popping books off the shelf or leaving dead albatrosses around. We gossiped with him a few minutes and listened to the ghost recite a poem and then we left the library with revenge dancing in our hearts and concerns about ghouls tracking us.
My head was also filled with the football game cheerleading moves for halftime playing over and over. I didn’t want to forget a move and make a mistake. I finally had a boyfriend to see me cheerlead and I wanted to be at my best. Last year I wasn’t a cheerleader and so far this year while I had been on the squad, I hadn’t dated anybody at all. Debbs had Seth and I had envied her doing her yells and looking at her boyfriend while he stared at her. It was romantic. Now I had Dagan to watch me strut my stuff tonight. I was excited about it and a little nervous like any new girlfriend of the Prince of Darkness’ grandson would be at the thought of him watching me do my cheers.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dagan was sitting with Bea and Zoe in the stadium watching the game. Although he spent a good amount time watching me as well. Am I proud. I had just finished a Hurkey when he gave me a thumbs-up.
Bounding down the bleachers he walked behind them and pulled out a cell phone. I knew he was still trying to reach his grandfather. So far he hadn’t had any luck. But we’d decided to put our paranormal problems on hold while we were at the football game. After that we’d plot strategy if he still hadn’t reached Dracula by phone.
Debbs bounced over to me shaking her pom-poms as she looked over at Dagan sitting with Bea and Zoe. “What is it with Bea and the freshman?”
