Legend of Stygian Downs (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 2)

by Kara Skye Smith

  Jessica makes a face at him to shut up, “Yes, actually. He is. My Father introduced us.”

  “Ahhh! A set-up!”

  “What are you doing, here, Theopolis?”

  “Just dropped Penelope off.”

  “In one piece?” she says.

  “Very funny. You know you don’t have to ask that with me, but… with you -” he walks around Drew looking at him, “well, your guy seems to be up and walking around.”

  “Touche, Theopolis. Good night!”

  Continuing toward the steps of the building Drew asks, “What was that about?”

  “O just jealousy,” Jessica says. Theopolis laughs.

  “Right,” he walks down the side walk - off into the night and yells, “Good bye dear friend and O, we’re so, so sorry. You do look lively, quite vivacious, but the night’s not over, yet-” and then into the darkness with his voice trailing off an evil laugh can be heard like an old movie vampire, “Ah-ah-ah!”

  Jessica kicks her foot against the cement step, then blurts out, “He’s deranged!”

  “Who is he?” Drew asks.

  “That other boy you told me I could tell you about at dinner. The friend my Father doesn’t want me to see anymore.”

  “Him? He was?” Drew turns around and sees just his shadow now half a block away.

  He looks back at Jessica, “That guy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Mm. Hmm. Well,” he says, flustered and unsure of what Theopolis has just told him, “either you’re deadly or he’s deranged.”

  Jessica laughs, “Kind of.”

  “Great. Kind of.”

  “He’s not always that pistol-ish - no, what am I saying? Yes he is! He’s never nice. Penelope this and Penelope that! Why do I even like him?”

  “He seems like kind of a jerk,” Drew says.

  “He’s not. Wait, I don’t know; he can be. He’s not into school. He won’t take anything seriously.”

  “I like school,” Drew grabs hold of Jessica’s coat lapels and pulls her over for a hug good-bye. Good night, Jessica. I’ll call you tomorrow.

  “Okay,” Jessica smiles and he walks away - the same direction as Theopolis, without all the dramatics and acting up. She likes him, she decides; and, she really does.

  Every year, Thaddeus Preference’s holds its Secondhand Ballgown Bash as the annual spring dance. Now, Thaddeus Preference is a very ancient and notable fellow, so don’t believe, dear readers, that clothing always makes the man. Jessica has just dressed herself in a really horrid purple thing, adjusting it’s fake flower in the mirror and trying not to get the giggles when the doorbell of the new house she’s moved into - out of her former dorm room -rings.

  “O no,” she moans, “he’s here!” she says goodbye to the girls at her house and walks down the stairs. Drew is waiting at the bottom.

  “You look gorgeous,” he tells her.

  “Don’t I though?” she says pulling on the gaudy dress’ skirt.

  “I got you this,” he says handing her a horribly, ugly corsage, “A ladyfinger - aren’t these the strangest looking flowers? With baby’s breath.”

  “O this is perfect. Pin it on me, next to the lovely fake, poufy one there.”

  “I think I should put it in your hair.”

  “Absolutely awful, isn’t it?” He fakes a few tears.

  “Enough to make Thaddeus Preference, himself, proud.”

  “Let’s go,” she says and the pair walk, arm in arm, down the walk of the house, onto the lamplit street toward the campus of Superior Inferiorism and all of its scholarly buildings. In which one of them, this very night, is filled with gawdy ball gowns and tuxedos with tennis shoes. There is a fake swan in the photo op corner and pink, paper stars hang from the ceiling.

  As Drew and Jessica attempt to enter the annual spring dance, a honk from a motorcycle catches them both off guard.

  “Geez, Theopolis, you scared me! What are you doing, here?” she asks as he pulls his motorcycle to a stop near his friend.

  “Same as you, only not as lovely,” he says.

  “Hello, again,” Drew says to him.

  “We meet again,” says Theopolis.

  “See you inside?” Jessica asks and sort of tells him thinking Drew might be getting the wrong impression.

  “Yeah,” he says and then adds, “save a dance for me,” he laughs. Two other motorcycles pull in and park near Theopolis and Jessica thinks for a moment about the night’s moon, full, and the underworld fiasco.

  “You okay?” Drew asks her, “you’re being kind of quiet.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “just didn’t think he’s be at an event like this.” Drew doesn’t say anything.

  “Now you’re being kind of quiet,” she tells him.

  “No,” they walk into the bright, pink and white decorated room with the large swan.

  “Horrible,” Jessica says with a smile.

  “Almost nauseating,” he remarks.

  After dancing, punch, and several uncomfortable chats with Theopolis, Drew excuses himself to talk to a girl he knows at the back of the room. Theopolis asks Jessica if she’d like to dance and she agrees although she admits to him she wasn’t sure he could dance.

  “Kidding me?’ he asks. Then shakes his head, “Wait for a slow one?” She smiles.

  “Sure. This is slow enough,” and they dance, kind of, but really talk while attempting to dance.

  “Who are those guys you’re with?”

  “Bammy-pires.”

  “Funny. No, really,” she insists.

  “Bammy-pires, really,” he says. “Who wants to know? Drew the mor-tal? The scholastic committee?”

  “No. Me. You’re not like your old self tonight, just thought you might tell an ancient from the cave, the vexed one‘s true half?”

  “Clown house,” he divulges.

  “The motorcycles, too?”

  “Um-hmm. Satisfied?”

  “Maybe,” she says, “where’s Penelope tonight?”

  “She’ll be here,” he says.

  “Full cell count?”

  “Is Drew?”

  “He is! I wouldn’t! My Father insisted - he’s like, immune.”

  “Nice. Good ol’ daddy watching out for you.”

  “An annoyance at first, but I -” she stops dancing.

  “You like him,” Theopolis says.

  “Yeah,” she says looking down at the dance floor where flecks of light dance reflecting off the mirrored ball hanging in the center of the room.

  “He seems nice,” Theopolis says.

  “O disgrace! You horrible boy!” she fake hits him.

  “Nice flower,” he says about the thing in her hair.

  “Where is Drew, anyway?” Jessica looks around. He is talking with a girl in a sleek, black gown near a table cookies and cheese plates.

  “The dress is supposed to be gaudy and secondhand,” Jessica says.

  “Uh-oh,” Theopolis teases, “are you jealous?”

  “Am not,” she says.

  “He is standing very close to her,” he goads, “you and I never stand that close - but we’re just friends.”

  “Are we?” she glares at him, and then looks back over at Drew.

  “Let’s go interrupt,” Theopolis suggests.

  “No,” she says, “I’ve got to go to the Ladies Room.”

  “Just like that?” he asks, “you’re leaving me on the dance floor?!” he fakes a girlish voice and a slight scene as she walks away, “right here?! I’ll learn to dance - please, don’t go!” he says. A girl offers to teach him to dance. He laughs and takes her hand, the same slow dance he and Jessica got through.

  In the bathroom, Jessica washes her hands and adjusts the ugly flower in her hair when two girls walk in - the same one she’d seen talking with Drew.

  “I really like him,” she says to the other girl.

  “Enough to ask him out,” the other asks.

  “I think so,” she giggles and makes a face.


  “Excuse me,” Jessica says, “but he’s with me.”

  “O, well, he didn’t say he was with anyone, did he?” the girl looks at her friend. She shakes her head, “No,” really fast. Her bobbed hair looks like the fringe of a car wash against her cheeks.

  “He didn’t say he was alone, here, did he?” Jessica asks.

  “Uh, yeah, I think so,” the girl sneers, “but now he isn’t-” the other girl does the fringy thing with her head, again, “he’s with me.”

  “No, I mean,” just then Jessica hears the rev of a motorcycle engine and then another two. Her fury, the moon, and the sound of the ancients - a cry Theopolis makes not knowing Jessica hears him through the open bathroom window - bring a strange and ‘forgotten’ feeling to the ancient soul of the vampire girl, lost for a moment in emotion unnamed. Is it jealousy or rage, she isn’t sure, nevertheless, the combination is enough to spur something Jessica has yet to experience yet what the eternal call ‘forgotten’ and her bat-wings begin to form beneath her dress. Theopolis has not bitten, but Jessica has not gone into bat form and with all the emotion Jessica doesn’t understand, her urge to ‘fly’ and the command of Theopolis’ ancient call mix and all at once she is aware with one wrong breath she might just fly right out the bathroom window! O tattered souls of eternal vampire entendres, was her Father right - or wrong?! Jessica looks out the window, willing her soul to stay inside - and a new struggle - to stay inside its current human form! It doesn’t. Out she goes into the moonlight, the lamplight, and - whoops! - the motorcycle’s headlight.

  “Jess?!!” the smallish bat flickers around him, chattering an almost giggling sound. He laughs, then looks around him.

  “Meet you over there, beneath that tree, in the shadows,” she laughs a sound only Theopolis deciphers and disappears, dipping and fluttering her night’s bat wings in the darkness of the cool shadows near the tree. Theopolis picks the lovely Jessica up, now hanging in the shadows of the tree.

  “What do you think? Not so hard is it?’

  “Are you kidding?” she chatters near his ear over the motorcycle’s engine noise, “I didn’t even mean to!” He is quiet for a moment, thinking about the emotion his friend must be going through to have sent herself into bat transference, unaware of how to do it and for the very first time.

  Jessica is suddenly worrying that Drew might not have deserved to be stranded at the dance, alone, and truly worrying - inventing scenarios, really, in her mind - about why he, maybe, did deserve it. Jessica is beside herself with what she calls ‘weird emotion’ and doesn’t know what in the worlds to do about it. Theopolis is less than helpful.

  He suggests going into bat form, too, to fly around, together, “A night ride!” he says. He won’t take any of her whining seriously and ends up wishing he hadn’t taken her away from the dance.

  “Jess, just let me help you with those wings, okay?” he says.

  “Their awesome power really shouldn’t be ignored right now,” he says.

  “If you’re not going to fly anywhere, let me help you ‘put back’ your wings, you know, return to your dress and all.” She agrees; and then, she tells Theopolis something, quietly, something that seems almost immortal in its importance, something that stops time for one, eternal split-second. She tells him she is really smitten - not feigning bitten - but full-fledged head over heels with Monsieur Drew Lexus-Paramour. And this time, Theopolis doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t tease. His own eternal moment is felt as well - somewhere else with someone else; and, Theopolis knows, right then, that Jessica does love Drew. He just silently hopes with all daggers out and a drop of the potion of immortality that Mr. Paramour loves her, too.

  “I hope so, Jess,” he tells her in his most sincere tone when she asks if Theopolis thinks Drew loves her, in return, “I really hope so.” Then Theopolis helps ‘put back’ her wings.

  “There,” he says, “you look fine again, well, except for that dress. But, there you go. Now you’ll know how to go ‘back‘.”

  He laughs, “I wouldn’t tell my brother how the first time he went batty. He missed a whole day of school. You know, when you were in your ‘bat’ I thought you were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. I hate to tell you this but as for Drew, you’ll have to hide it from him - the rest of his life. I’m not sure you’re making the right decision,” Theopolis says.

  “I am,” Jessica tells him, “I mean, the decision is made, I guess, for me. It’s knd of too late to change my mind. It’s somehow, more eternal than that.”

  “It will show - your vampire side,” he says.

  “It won’t,” she crosses her heart.

  “You’re livin’ in a dream world, girl, or else denial.”

  “Frightful, isn’t it?”

  “Much worse,” he says.

  “We don’t play by all their rules, Jessica. Do you even know what they are? You didn’t grow up with the things these people talk about - it won’t be as easy as here, at this school; and you can’t go his whole life pretending-”

  “I know,” Jessica admits.

  “How’re you gonna do it, Jess? Wing it?”

  “Bad pun,” she says, “I do have them.”

  “Exactly! Just one of the many, many things you’ll have to hide, shield him, pretend-”

  Jessica interrupts, “He’s tolerant.”

  Theopolis scoffs, “He thinks he is. He doesn’t know what it is - what you are!”

  “A powerless soul…”

  “Immortal. The night, Jessica. You could be the night.”

  “I like the daytime,” Jessica argues.

  “Stars…”

  “Flowers..”

  “Moon flowers,” Theopolis says.

  “Hikes!”

  “Night rides!”

  “Lu-” she is interrupted with his frustrated argument that she isn’t looking at their differences as the realistic barriers they are.

  “O next you’re going to say Church Bells, Jess! You might want this, but you aren’t… human!”

  Jessica looks down and says quietly, “I’m half human, Theopolis, and you aren’t the one who’s going to change my mind. You aren’t… the one… for me,” she says sadly.

  Theopolis looks away and then looks back after several moments, “Yeah, well,” he says, “I don’t believe you. If you’re a vampire, you’re a vampire. That’s just the way it is. But I’m going to let you go - for you and your precious ‘famous’ daddy’s sake. And when, I mean if, it falls apart, I’ll be there, as a friend. But I’m NOT going to hang around and help you with your Sunday coat and provincial hand bag! You‘re doing just fine, here, but wait until you have to ‘fit in‘ with the neighbors!”

  “I love Drew.”

  He makes his voice sound shakey, “L-o-ve?! Bub’s tailfork! Shouldn’t you be melting right now?” he teases. Jessica laughs.

  “That’s what I thought,” and then she tells him, “It won’t impede your soul.”

  “O don’t go getting all college therapist on me, now. I took 101, too, ya know.”

  “It won’t impede your soul to love. Father did it. He loved my mother. He told me so.”

  “Huh?” Theopolis asks looking quite uneasy, “didn’t he -”

  “Die of it? No. He didn’t die. And he didn’t feed upon -”

  “Wow. I’ve heard horrible things.”

  “Me too. But it’s not impossible.”

  “Not where I come from,” Theopolis tells her firmly.

  “Yeah, I suppose. Okay, you know I understand your argument, too. Most of my life, I was raised just like you. My Father wasn’t with my mother very long, and I never knew her. The reason he doesn’t like you is that you both have the same attitude about this. I grew up with his victim of the week drain - the only way he‘ll view a mortal, now- a donor - so, you don’t have to make excuses to me.”

  “Control freak,” he tells her.

  “Wretch,” she calls back.

  “Martha Stewart,” he calls back to her.
/>
  “Ouch! Too far!” she says.

  Theopolis laughs, “Let’s go. Got those wings in?” She looks at her arms in the moonlight.

  “Glowing skin like the moon made me herself.”

  “Himself,” Theopolis corrects her.

  Back inside the Ballgown Bash, Jessica finds Drew standing alone.

  “Don’t know what it is,” he says as she walks up to him, “but that dress actually becomes you.”

  “Is that a compliment?” she asks.

  “You look, dare I say it, exquisite.” Her fangs nearly show.

  “Must’ve been the night air,” she says, “sorry I was gone so long.”

  “I was getting kind of insecure, like maybe it was the corsage. Too cheesy… or -”

  “O how will I do it?” Jessica whispers.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “Look, Jessica,” Drew says a bit loudly, “I feel like a heel, here. Whatever I did can we just forget about it? This is an important night, to me, a special night. What I’m trying to say - Jessica? Will you marry me?” and he whips out a little jewelry box with a ring from his pocket so fast it almost startles her.

  “Marry me,” he says, more quietly this time.

  “O dazzlement! Drew?!”

  “Yes?” he asks and takes the ring out of the box and puts it on her finger.

  “Yes,” she says. They dance under the lights and paper stars for half the night.

  “Mrs. Jessica D’Angeliuson Lexus-Paramour. How does that sound?” he asks her.

  “Nothing like Stewart,” she says.

  “Huh?” he asks.

  “I love it,” she says.

  “We really should get out of this tacky, pink, swans-under-the-stars room,” he tells her, “let’s go home.”

  “What if you don’t know every-single-thing about me?” Jessica asks.

  “I’ll learn,” he says.

  “If it’s something I don’t like, Jessica, I’ll adjust.” And then Jessica gets very excited and asks him, “When are we having the wedding?!” She holds her hand out and looks at her ring under the lamppost light.

  “This ring,“ Jessica tells Drew, “It’s really intriguing. I’ve never seen anything like it. What is this part made of?”