A Girl's Guide to Vampires do-1

by Кейти Макалистер

  "She means if you've fed," Roxy chirped. "I don't suppose you'd let me watch—" He transferred his look to her. "No. You're right. It's a bad idea."

  "If you will allow me, I believe I will join you later at the fair."

  "Sure thing," I said brightly, trying not to acknowledge that he was off to prey on some unsuspecting victim. "Later. We'll be there. Somewhere."

  "Bon appétit," Roxy said.

  I grabbed her by the arm and hustled her down the grassy hill toward the fair. "For God's sake, Roxy, you don't tell a Dark One bon appétit!. That's utterly tactless!"

  "Why?" she asked, stumbling over a clod of dirt. "I want him to have a good meal. What if he picked someone who was born in an off year? Or someone with a blood disease? You may not have any plans for him later, but I do, so I'd like him to be in a good mood. I want to hear all about the stuff he hasn't written yet, all the dirt on the Dark Ones. And he promised me it was my turn next with the thumbscrews in the dungeon room."

  I looked back over my shoulder as we reached the bottom of the hill. Christian was silhouetted against the glow from the hotel, the wind setting his long coat flapping around his legs as he stood frozen, watching us.

  "Raphael can't be done soon enough for me. I sure hope nothing goes wrong at the fair tonight," I muttered under my breath.

  Roxy heard me. "What could go wrong tonight? You're not reading any rune stones tonight, so the world ought to be safe from any of the disasters, catastrophes, and general acts of God that follow when you do."

  There are times when Roxy isn't particularly prescient.

  I found Raphael by one of the two tents that served prepackaged food and hot beverages. Although the fair was not licensed to serve alcohol, many customers brought their own in. With the crowds gathering for the big festival a few days away, Raphael was particularly hard-pressed to weed out those who had overindulged and were making a nuisance of themselves. He was escorting two women and a tall, skinny young man off the fairgrounds, telling them they could come back later after they'd sobered up.

  "From the way they're staggering—not to mention the bits of song interspersed in their condemnation of your actions—I'm betting they sleep it off rather than return later."

  "That's the general idea." Raphael smiled as he turned to face me. There were lines of stress alongside his mouth, and his beautiful eyes looked troubled and distracted. I squelched my plans to tease him into a frenzy of lustful thoughts, and tried instead to smooth away the frown that creased his forehead.

  "Not going well tonight?"

  "No worse than what we expected." He caught my hand and pressed a warm kiss to my palm. "How did your evening with Dante go?"

  I swallowed back the horrible memory of Christian's torment. "OK. I'll tell you about it later." Much later. Say, five or six years later.

  A burst of static and unintelligible garble came from the radio clipped to his belt. He seemed to understand it, however, because he barked a command into the radio, and grabbed me as he started back toward the fair proper.

  "Here. You take this." He pulled his trailer key out of his pocket and shoved it in my hand. "I'll be there as soon after closing as I can. Rico needs help with a fight near the main tent. Stay away from that area until we can clear it out."

  "No problem. Don't worry about me. I'll go find Arielle and see how she's doing."

  He started off at a trot toward the big tent, then changed his mind and pulled me into a quick, hard kiss. "Have I told you how wonderful you are today?" he growled into my mouth.

  "No, but I'm willing to entertain your apologies later for so gross a negligence." I nipped his chin and felt a glow of happiness inside me at the heated look he sent before turning back toward the main tent.

  "Be careful," I couldn't help but calling out.

  He raised his hand in acknowledgment, and muscled his way through the thickening crowds.

  Arielle was near the end of her rope.

  "Joy!" she shouted as I wandered by her tent, pleased to see the huge line of people waiting to have their palms read. She stood up, excused herself to the startled client, and dashed after me, clutching my hands in hers when she reached me. "Oh, Joy, I am so happy to see you. I have sent Roxy to find you—please, you must help me. I am in a situation most desperate."

  I smiled and gave her hands a little shake. "Of course I'll help you. What do you need?"

  She started dragging me back toward her booth where the line of people—steadily growing with the increasing crowd—were beginning to look a bit disgruntled. "Tanya will not read. She came back earlier and refused Dominic's order to read the tarot cards."

  I guessed where this was going. "I'm glad she's back safe and sound, although I'm sorry to hear she won't read, but I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't know the first thing about tarot cards—"

  "No, no," she said, shaking her head vehemently as she continued dragging me past the line of people waiting. "It is all arranged. I shall read the tarot, and Renee—she is Bastian's wife, you know her? She is very much with child—she will read the palms, but you must read the runes, for Renee is a bohémienne, a gypsy, you see, and she does not feel the runes inside her. You will read the runes most successfully, and I shall be very thankful to you."

  "But, but—"

  "It is all arranged," Arielle repeated, shoving me into her chair. "I will go now to Tanya's booth and read the tarot. Renee is using the tea tent for the palm readings. You give a three-stone reading for 150 koruna or five euros. You may keep the tips, of course. Here are your stones—Roxy brought them from your room. Is that all you need? Yes? Excellent." Arielle clapped her hands and shouted out over the din that a great reader of runes had come halfway across the world to read for them. No one looked particularly impressed by either that news or my appearance in faded jeans and a Bavarian sweater, but no one cried foul either, so I picked up my bag of stones and gave the woman in the chair opposite me a smile.

  "You must think of a question you'd like some insight on," I told her in German, praying everyone in line would get tired of waiting and go off to another booth.

  Three hours and twenty-four minutes later I wished a young Czech couple good night as I tucked the last few coins into Arielle's cash box, dumped the money from her tip jar into a cloth bag I assumed she used for that purpose and stuck that into the cash box as well, then stood up to stretch my exhausted body. Besides the steady stream of people who wanted to have the runes read for their benefit, I had other visitors too. Dominic swept in dramatically, giving me one of his seductive smiles as he thanked me for helping. I accepted his thanks, ignored his leer, and told him in an undertone to take his act elsewhere unless he wanted me to get up and walk away right that moment. He took one look at the line of people waiting, wrestled my hand away from where I was clutching the table, and made a showy bow over it, kissing my wrist and making sure everyone saw him licking his fangs.

  "Ham," I growled.

  "Mon ange," he oozed.

  Raphael was a much more welcome visitor, but although he stopped by three times, he looked distracted and did nothing more than to ask if everything was all right. Roxy and Christian waved twice as they passed while making the rounds, stopping the second time to drop off a bottle of cold water and a big pretzel.

  Even Milos visited, once to express his appreciation for my helping—in a voice so low I almost couldn't hear it—and the second time to clear out the overflowing cash box. By the time I'd read the last rune for the last customer, I was sore and tired from the stress of reading runes for more than fifty people. I pulled out Raphael's key, intending to crash there, but the thought of a long, hot soak in the tub at the hotel sang a siren song to my aching body.

  I creaked my way over to where Arielle was still reading tarot cards. "I finished with everyone, so I'm going to call it a night. Have you seen Roxy?"

  She shook her head.

  "Never mind. How about Raphael?"

  "He was here a few minutes ago. He said
he was checking on a problem someone had reported, but he would be back directly after that."

  "Ah. Well, if you see him again, would you tell him I've gone to have a bath, but I'll be back?"

  She nodded, her eyes warm with thanks. I left the cash box with her and did the salmon-spawning-upstream thing again through the crowds until I reached the edge of the fair. The noise from behind me indicated the first band was about to play, which accounted for most of the people heading in that direction. I stepped over the usual signs of people having fun—a puddle of vomit, empty wine bottles, discarded condom wrappers, and miscellaneous trash blowing across the crushed grass—and headed away from the noise and lights to the relative calmness of the outer fringes.

  Voices raised loud in song made me pause as I was about to take my usual path past the tent city. Eight or nine people were dancing in various stages of undress around a burn barrel, clearly members of the intoxicated group Raphael had ushered out earlier. Rather than risk attracting their notice, I cut sharply to the left, huffed and puffed my way up a steep hill made slippery with pine needles, and plunged into a small stand of fir trees at the far end of the hotel's property. It was a dark, close area that smelled heavenly, but gave me goose bumps with its isolated location. After the experience in Christian's dungeon, I wanted the security of lights and people around me.

  As I rounded a large pine tree, I stopped. Ahead of me someone was hunkered over between two trees at the fringe of the stand. Probably just a solitary drunken Goth ralphing up too much cheap wine, I told myself. But as I quietly tried to edge my way around him, I could see that the person wasn't a Goth, wasn't ralphing up anything, and wasn't alone.

  The figure silhouetted against the distant hotel was large, muscular, and extremely familiar to me. But what held my gaze, and what kept me from calling out in delight, was the person at his feet.

  Even in the almost dark I recognized the crimson hair that spread like a stain from her head.

  If Raphael had been attempting CPR, or trying to slap Tanya awake, or even talking to her, I'd have run forward to help him, but the silence he maintained, the economical but efficient movements as he searched Tanya, kept me frozen behind the tree that partially hid me from his view. Raphael plucked something from the ground near Tanya, examined it for a moment, then tucked it in his pocket and looked out into the night, his head turning slowly as he made a scan of the area. I ducked back behind the tree, my heart pounding madly, unsure why I was hiding from him, but doing it nonetheless. When I peeked out a moment later, he was gone.

  Tanya wasn't, however.

  "Please just let her be sleeping. Or unconscious. Or playing possum. Or in a drugged stupor. Please oh please oh please don't let her be…" I couldn't even say the word, which was stupid because I knew full well she was dead. Raphael's body language screamed it, Tanya's still form screamed it, and every hair on my head that stood on end as I'd watched him looking her over screamed it.

  She was dead. She lay on her side, curled up into a ball, resting on a pine-needle mattress with her hair streaming out around her like a red halo. Her eyes were closed. I didn't see any sign that she was breathing, but figured I'd better check to make sure she wasn't gravely wounded instead of dead.

  I leaned forward to look at Tanya, felt a warning tickle high up in my nose, and threw myself backward, pulling out a handful of tissues from my pocket as I did so. I sat back on my heels a moment later, praying there wasn't any bad karma to be had from sneezing on a possibly dead person. She sure looked dead. I swallowed back a lump of revulsion before I reached out with a hand that shook more than I was willing to acknowledge, pushing back the collar of her jacket and touching one fingertip to her chin. It felt warmish.

  "Pulse, you idiot—you can't tell anything from a person's chin. Check fora pulse," I lectured myself. I scooted forward until I was leaning over her, moving her head gently to the side so I could find her pulse point.

  My hand froze.

  A scream tore through the heavy night air, startling the birds nesting in the trees around me. I ignored the screaming, unable to take my eyes from the horrible sight, unable to believe I was seeing what was in front of me. A distant part of my mind wished that whoever was screaming would shut up so I could think in peace, but the rest of my mind, the part that was staring at Tanya's neck, was too stunned to do any thinking at all.

  A dark form swooped out of the blackness and grabbed me, slamming me up against a brick wall of warmth and comfort, mercifully silencing the screamer. "Hush, baby. You're all right, I'm here now."

  I shuddered into the warmth that called to me, clinging desperately to Raphael, pressing against him in an attempt to block out the horror of the thing behind me. "It's Tanya," I shivered into his neck.

  "I know, baby."

  "She's dead."

  "I know."

  The horrible image of her neck torn open, the blood drained from her filled my mind. I tried to wedge myself in tighter to Raphael. "I know who killed her," I whispered.

  His arms tightened around me as he pressed his lips against my temple. "So do I, baby. So do I."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "It isn't you," I told Raphael as soon as I could pull myself from him.

  "What isn't me?" he asked as he peered around us.

  "The person who killed Tanya."

  He slowly turned to look at me. "I'm delighted to hear you don't think I have a murderous nature."

  "I didn't say that. I think you probably could kill someone if you had a reason to, but I happen to know you didn't kill Tanya."

  He strode the few steps over to me, grabbing both my arms and staring intently into my eyes. "How do you know that? What did you see?"

  "I didn't see who killed her, if that's what you're asking."

  He sighed with relief and let go of my arms, continuing to scour the immediate area.

  "But I saw her neck. I know who was the only one who could have killed her. With all the… damage that was done, and the fact that there's not a drop of blood to be seen, the only one who could have killed her is a…"

  "Vampire?" he asked, squatting down to examine something on the ground.

  I nodded, realized he wasn't looking at me, and added, "Yes. I know you don't believe in them—God knows I didn't before I came here and had my mind invaded—but even you have to admit that her death looks like just what you'd expect from a vampire."

  "Yes, it is," he agreed as he examined the ground around the tree. I had no idea what he expected to find, since the soft bed of pine needles wasn't conducive to footprints or other helpful clues, but still he looked.

  And suddenly that struck me as odd. "What exactly are you doing?"

  He ignored my question, tapping his finger on his chin for a moment before marching over to put both hands on my shoulders, his eyes alight with concern and worry. "I know it's asking a lot of you, but could you stay here by yourself for a few minutes until the police arrive?"

  I blinked at him. "The police?"

  He nodded. "They should be here shortly."

  "You called them?"

  "Of course. I know it won't be pleasant for you to stay here by yourself, but I have to leave before the police get here. I… er… I have to let Dominic know what's going on." The words were stiff and halting. "You won't be in any danger; I will only be a few minutes."

  I stared at him for a moment, then glanced over at Tanya's body. I didn't really want to be alone with her, but it was clearer than ever that Raphael wanted to avoid contact with the police. While I didn't think running from a problem was the answer, now was not the time to give him a lecture about facing up to his past. Or whatever it was that was bothering him. "OK. I'll stay."

  He looked a bit surprised by my easy acquiescence. "You don't mind? You won't be frightened?"

  I shook my head. "No. Tanya isn't going to do me any harm, and certainly her killer won't." After all, he'd sworn earlier that evening that he'd never hurt me. "Go ahead. I'll wait here for the p
olice."

  Raphael opened his mouth to say something, closed it, then opened it again with a little shake of his head. "You and I are going to have a very long talk just as soon as I can manage it."

  "Good," I said, wrapping my arms around his waist and giving him a hug. "I have a lot of questions I'd like answered."

  He shook his head again, told me what to tell the police when they arrived, and strode off into the night.

  As I watched him walk away, the questions kept running through my mind. What were you doing out here instead of watching over things at the fair? What did you pick up off the ground near Tanya? What are you hiding about your past? And how did you find out about poor Christian?

  Poor Christian. The words echoed in my head as I glanced over to Tanya's lifeless body. Poor Christian had done that to her. Poor Christian had viciously ripped her throat open and drained her dry. I shuddered at the thought of it, sickened by the stark reality of a Dark One's true nature. His feeding on her wasn't romantically erotic as he described it in his books—Tanya's life had been stolen from her in an act of brutal savagery, animalistic in its butchery. My stomach lurched unpleasantly as I recognized the undeniable truth: Christian was extremely dangerous, a killer without remorse.

  And he was insanely jealous of the man I loved.

  The police arrived before I worked out a solution of what to do about Christian. Black-and-white police cars swarmed the far end of the hotel parking lot, their lights flashing as they formed a semicircle around the area where I stood. I was surprised to see so many police there, figuring Raphael might only have left a warning that there was a body to be found; then I felt guilty for thinking so poorly of him. He might be no stranger to the police, but that didn't mean he would shirk his duty.

  An older man with salt-and-pepper hair and a big mustache sauntered over to me. He asked me something in Czech. I shook my head and pointed to Tanya, answering him in German. "Raphael, the man who called you, told me to stay here with her while he went to the fair to let the owners know what is going on."