by Aiden James
***
“You woke me up!” Chanson chided me, once she and the rest of our vampire entourage joined us upstairs. The last vestige of daylight had faded into near-darkness, leaving only a slight pink glow at the edge of the distant horizon to the west. “In truth, your little escapade down below roused us all before we needed to awake. There goes our beauty sleep!”
She placed her hands on her hips and eyed me coyly, making much of what she just said a playful dig, although I detected some irritation in her brilliant green eyes. Like Racco, she and her companions were all dressed in blue jeans, but she, Nora, and Raquel were attired in sweaters—cocoa, purple, and beige, respectively—as opposed to the blue and black flannel shirt Garvan wore.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, feeling mostly sincere. As long as I didn’t linger on the fantasy of a sexual frolic with Racco. “I will be more discreet next time.”
“It might be wise to consider someone closer to your own age,” she told me, which drew a snicker from Raquel, who stood nearby. Honestly, I would’ve never guessed Raquel was listening, since she carried on an animated conversation with Nora. “We shall talk more about this after you have had a chance to eat tonight.”
Chanson motioned for me to join her at the table, which like yesterday afternoon bore an array of delights. It appeared this would be it for tonight, instead of last night’s obscene extravagance in the other room, where far too much food covered the long table. Mercel managed a smaller bar nearby, which I assumed my ancient cousin would soon visit along with the others.
“And don’t let either of the immortal males in attendance this evening dissuade you from meeting with me,” she continued, reaching out to take my arm like a big sis making sure I reached my destination with minimal distractions. “Believe me, they both are vying for your affections, even though neither one is suitable for you.”
Her knowing smile reminded me that she was privy to my thoughts. I had been thinking crazy ‘life together’ fantasies involving Racco, since our interrupted physical encounter earlier. A quick glance around the room supported her words, as I caught Racco smiling at me from the bar and Garvan watching him from across the room with a disapproving scowl upon his face.
If it wasn’t fun, it sure as hell could be an interesting night.
“Txema, come and join me and Mercel for another drink!” Racco called to me, moving over to the table and pulling a chair out for me.
Before I replied with the ‘sure!’ I intended to give him, Garvan suddenly appeared next to him, his face drawn near to Racco’s. They both glared at each other.
“I’ll sit over here with the ladies,” I offered, after allowing Chanson to move me to the opposite side of the table. Nora and Raquel joined us there. Luckily, another ice sculpture—this one a mermaid—blocked my direct view of where Racco and Garvan presently stood. “I’d like to visit with them for awhile.”
“Certainly,” said Racco, smiling again as he peered around the sculpture.
He nodded respectfully to Garvan and sat down. Garvan’s frown remained fixed upon his face as he looked away from Racco. His expression changed to one of smug satisfaction by the time he turned his attention to me. Thankfully, he only nodded, which saved me further involvement.
“See, jealousy and ‘cat fights’ are not strictly the domain of the female sex!” whispered Chanson, drawing close to where her lilac scent was nearly overpowering. “You are the new flower in spring that so allures the bees and the wasps equally, so be careful. Your world is changing…your life will never be the same. But, you know these things, Txema. Go ahead and gain nourishment for your body, and then you and I shall talk.”
I nodded politely, wondering what new revelations would be forthcoming from Chanson, whom I could tell had taken upon herself the role of my protector. Like the older sister I never had. Part of that revelation comforted me—as strange as all of this was at this point. But, as I sat there, thinking about the tension between Racco and Garvan, and the journey to their homeland that would be completed sometime before the next day’s nightfall, I felt alone again—worse than at any point I could recall since my life spiraled into chaos.
The distractions of being the center of attention for the immortal undead, and the romantic focus for the even rarer immortal human were simply thin veneers that couldn’t erase the family and friends I had lost, possibly forever. In a snap, all of my worries returned to me in full force, and I felt trapped and lost.
I grabbed a few small club sandwiches and ate quickly. Then I grabbed another glass of wine and nodded to Chanson, letting her know I was ready to hear what she had on her mind.
“Come with me,” she said, standing up from the table and motioning to the others to stay behind. “Join me for a walk on the deck.”
“Should I grab my coat?” I worried, thinking winter in the Atlantic couldn’t be any warmer than winter back home.
“No. It shouldn’t take that long,” she assured me.
The random thought suddenly flew into my mind that maybe she would suck me dry and toss my blood-less corpse overboard.
“You are such a silly girl, sometimes, Txema!” she chided me, chuckling as she led the way outside. “Why would I possibly harm the last link between my kind and the elixir of eternal youth and beauty?”
She laughed heartily. A stiff frozen breeze embraced us, far colder than her presence. I wouldn’t last outside of the yacht’s protective warmth for long. The deck swayed noticeably, forcing me to grab the handle to the door we had just exited with my free hand. The brass felt especially frigid, sending deepening pain through my fingers.
“Hold on to me instead,” she said, offering her arm for me to grasp onto.
She seemed like a statue with a lead base, unmovable, despite the ship’s reckless speed through the darkness. If not for the recent knowledge I’d gained about vampires’ supernatural abilities, I would’ve been scared shitless right then. I grabbed onto her arm and held on for dear life.
“You and I are not so different,” she said, her long dark hair billowing around her face.
Her luminous eyes flashed with acute excitement. In the glow from a nearby lamp, they seemed even brighter than I’d recalled seeing before. Perhaps they were accentuated by the paleness of her skin. Even so, I had no doubt that most males—alive or not so much—would find her beauty extremely compelling. She even added a dash of makeup that night, accentuating her lashes and eyebrows with a touch of mascara, as well as adding blush to her cheeks and lipstick to her otherwise bluish lips.
“How do you mean?” I asked, certain her comment wasn’t a reference to her ancestry to me.
“As I told you, long ago I was once where you are now,” she said, pausing to look out into the darkness surrounding us. “I was young, like you, when Gustav came to me. It was the last time a crisis like the one we find ourselves in now happened. I had seen him before. I recalled waking up in the middle of the night on several occasions, with a slight pain in my neck above the birthmark you and I share. I would catch a glimpse of a handsome man leaving by way of my window.”
She paused for a moment, and the way she studied me told me that she was allowing me a moment to search my own memory for such experiences. I was about to shrug my shoulders to let her know I had nothing to add to what she told me. But, then I remembered something…an image of a young woman who would sometimes show up in my room late at night—often following a nightmare of falling off a cliff into a pit of sharp wooden spikes. Most the time, I ended up running into my parents’ bedroom, screaming from the nightmare. I scarcely recalled the pinprick pain in my neck, but I knew it felt familiar the first night Garvan visited me.
“Yes, it is the same for all of us who share the twin tears on our throats,” she advised. “I can tell by your shivers that we only have another minute out here where we can talk like this. So, I will try to be quick with what you need to know now, and the rest will have to wait until we can afford a longer visit.”
&nbs
p; I nodded enthusiastically that this would be best, since I was freezing my ass off. It became my hunch that reading a human’s thoughts must be related to close proximity, since when I glanced through the nearest window I could see everyone else on the ship remained gathered at the table, although Garvan stared intently in our direction. He looked both perplexed and frustrated.
“You will be given the same choices that I had long ago,” she continued, once she had my full attention again. “Follow your heart at that moment. Immortality is yours to decree with whatever decision you make—whether it is your immortality or another’s. Just don’t let Racco sully your mind and heart. Your entire being must be lucid when the moment of truth comes for you.”
“When will that happen?” I asked, after nodding thoughtfully. I knew the likely locale for this decision would be somewhere in France. Would it happen quickly, or were there more pieces to this crazy puzzle that had to fall in place first?
“Not as soon as we reach our destination, but certainly not long after you get settled in your new home.”
“In the castle?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Gustav will share more about this tomorrow night, when you meet him and the others who are waiting anxiously to meet you!”
“So, we will reach France tomorrow?”
“Yes, we are less than five hundred miles from the mainland now, and should reach our docking point sometime in the morning,” she said. “Whether or not we will wait until dusk to make the trip into the mountains, to reach the castle, has not yet been determined. It depends on Customs and on other developments going on among the European vampires. I will share more once I know for sure what is happening.”
“Do you know what became of my friends back in Tennessee? Peter and Tyreen?” I asked, just before she ushered me back inside the ‘Blue Antoinette’. “I’m really worried about them.”
“I understand your fears for their welfare,” she said. “You want assurance they are okay? I will tell you this: they are both safe and doing fine. You will soon see them again. Very soon.”
Chapter 15
Chanson’s words proved cathartic for me, and I had no idea the tremendous comfort and relief I would feel from what she said. Almost immediately, the overwhelming exhaustion from everything I had gone through hit me full force. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open, and much worse than the night before. I had become a queen-sized, party-pooper.
Needing time alone, I walked myself back to my cabin. Surprised I even lasted until shortly after ten o’clock, I laid down on the bed. Intending to rest just a moment and then go wash my face and brush my teeth, I didn’t wake up until almost noon the next day.
It was Tuesday, exactly one week after my initial encounter with a vampire.
Before taking a shower, I peered through the window blinds, thinking we must be drifting since the ship’s engines were silent. But, the ship wasn’t drifting. It sat motionless.
I gasped in surprise. A beautiful coastline sprawled before me, featuring a mixture of French and Spanish-styled buildings. Sailboats surrounded us beneath a cloudless sky, skimming along much bluer water than what I’d seen the past few days.
I assumed we had arrived in France, less than a half-mile away from that nation’s shore.
I could hardly wait to set my feet on solid ground again. Yet, at the same time, that same prospect brought a dire sense of finality. It was as if whatever I was then, or more like whoever I was at that moment, would soon irreversibly change forever. There would be no way to get back to the person I was before my forced trans-Atlantic journey began.
I thought about my family, and how many times we had talked about visiting France, to return to Grandma Terese’s childhood home. We always found some reason or another not to follow through with an actual trip overseas.
“But, I’m here now,” I whispered to myself, trying to find something to focus on other than sadness, since I missed them all terribly.
I glanced around the room, looking for familiar items from the past few days to distract myself. Somehow, another complete change of clothes had been laid out across a chair just inside the door to my cabin. Unlike the other night, when elegance was the choice made for me, this time my outfit consisted of brand new jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, not unlike the ones in my wardrobe back on campus that bore the UT insignia.
I showered and took a little longer getting ready than yesterday, hoping that Racco’s offer to join me for some afternoon fun was still a possibility. I needed an effective distraction to get past the emotional war going on within me. If Peter was here, I’d have insisted on time alone with him. But, he wasn’t. It could be a long time—if ever—before we saw each other again, regardless of Chanson’s assurances. If she was correct, more than likely that would be long after our budding love had died, and his devotion given to a new love.
That was my rationale right then. However, a ship not moving didn’t necessarily mean we had a skipper with idle time on his hands—certainly not the kind of idle hand time I was hoping for. In all likelihood, plans were already being finalized for our move to dry land, with a caravan up into the Southern Pyrenees the top priority of the ship’s crew.
A knock resounded at my door soon after I finished blow-drying my hair.
“Who is it?”
“Mademoiselle Ybarra?”
It sounded like Racco’s assistant, Mercel.
“I’ll be right there!” I rushed to finish my makeup and grab my shoes and, unlike last night, a jacket. “Coming!”
“It’s all right, ma chére,” the owner of the voice replied. Apparently, there were people on the yacht who did speak and understand more English than I gave them credit for. “Racco would like you to join him upstairs for lunch.”
When I opened the door, I did find Mercel waiting for me. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t previously addressed me in English. It irritated me how he acted clueless when I spoke English before. But, that question would have to wait. He walked ahead of me, briskly, leading me to the stairs I was well familiar with by then.
“We will unload the ship within the hour,” he called back to me.
By the time I caught up to him upstairs, he and the rest of the crew were gathered at a table near the window facing the scenic view I had glimpsed from my cabin window. Mercel introduced me to the others—all of whom spoke perfect English—that included two males I had not seen until then. Hearing them all speak so casually and in my native tongue was quite unsettling, and made me wonder again why in the hell they had gone through such a charade of acting like they only understood French the past two days. I was about to upbraid everyone for the bullshit at my expense, when I heard Racco’s booming voice enter the room from behind us.
“Txema! You are such a vision in even the most mundane attire, are you not?”
He laughed merrily, and just like that, my anger melted away. Well, maybe it didn’t completely. He was dressed similar to me and the others, in a sweatshirt and jeans. But, unlike the oversized shirts the rest of us had on, his was form fitting. Hard to know if it was on purpose or not, but the effect was the same. I couldn’t help but smile…lovingly.
“You’re pretty easy on the eyes, too, I’d say,” I told him, feeling my pulse quicken.
My comment pleased him, although he seemed a little self-conscious for a moment. He grabbed a ham sandwich from the table, foregoing the finer finger foods and the caviar he seemed to cherish on Sunday.
“We will be leaving in about twenty minutes,” he said, and then motioned for the two males I hadn’t recognized before that afternoon to follow him as he moved toward the stairs leading to the flybridge above us. “Raul and Simon will take the ship into port while the rest of us finish packing up everything we’ll need at the castle.”
Everyone else grabbed what they could carry in their hands to eat, and despite my desire for the more delectable items, I settled for a couple of finger sandwiches and a raspberry wine cooler. I then followed Mercel and
the girl servers as they moved downstairs.
“Is this how you normally do lunch, to be in such a rush?” I asked Mercel once we neared my cabin. “I thought the French always take their time when dining, with the idea of savoring a meal instead of wolfing it down like an American.”
At least he caught my joke, as he laughed immediately. After he explained it to the girls—in English, no less—they laughed too.
“We are not usually like this, and Racco had planned for a leisurely afternoon out here in this beautiful bay. However, a phone call this morning changed those plans,” he advised, motioning for the girls to follow him to the room where the caskets were stored. “He wanted you to sleep undisturbed, but now we are in a rush, since it will still take a few hours to arrive at the chateau. Racco said we must be there before darkness returns. So, be sure to take only things you cannot live without.”
Mercel’s beautiful blue eyes turned slightly darker, adding emphasis to his update.
“Okay,” I agreed, shrugging my shoulders and heading into my room. “Do I need to grab anything from the bathroom, like the shampoo, facial scrub, and soap?”
“Only the makeup, since there is plenty of soap and shampoo at the chateau,” he advised, before darting into the room where the girls had already disappeared. “Not that you need makeup, but a woman likes to always look her very best, yes?”
“I guess,” I replied, shooting him a smile I hoped told him that I appreciated his compliment. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
***
Apparently the caskets were already set up on rollers. I hadn’t noticed that fact the previous afternoon. Then again, it was hard to notice much else when the sexiest ‘old’ man the world has ever known stood just inches behind me.
Within fifteen minutes of the hustle and bustle, Racco’s crew had gathered up everything we needed for our trip into the mountains. The caskets were all lined up in the hallway outside my cabin, while the mere mortals and their immortal human captain reconvened upstairs. Even the table laden with food had already been cleared and cleaned. I admit that I entertained an image of Racco’s servants shoving everything inside the kitchen during the rush.
