Casa Dracula 3 - The Bride Of Casa Dracula (10 page)

Ian’s face came close to mine, his lips so near my neck that I could feel his breath. He pulled me tight, and my hips moved in rhythm with his. I felt as if I could anticipate his moves, and I wished I could dance with Oswald like this.

When the song ended, Ian smiled at me. “I’ve missed the way you smell.”

“Like dinner,” I said.

“Like no one else.”

The crowd began clapping and shouting. I looked to the stage and saw the trumpeter pulling Frankie’s mom up. As she untied her apron and smiled, I said, “That’s Juanita! I saw her singing at My Dive!”

She began to sing a romantic bolero, too romantic for my situation, which was standing beside a continental smoothie who had put his arm around my waist. Someone tapped my shoulder and I felt as if I’d received a death row reprieve from the governor. I stepped away from Ian and turned to see Frankie.

The young guy was shuffling his feet and mumbling, “So I’m sorry. No harm, no foul. Let’s move on.”

“Good idea, but how should we do that? Why were you stealing when you’ve got a job?”

He shrugged. “I’m trying to get a little money together so I can get out of here. Maybe go to California and meet me some California girls.”

As a California girl, I was deeply and sincerely touched.

Ian said, “An admirable goal.”

“I can’t believe your mom is Juanita,” I told Frankie. “I saw her playing with the Rat-Dogs.”

“That crazy band,” Frankie said. “Who wants to listen to klezmer and salsa?”

“I do. She’s following her heart,” I said. “What do you think you’d like to do with your life?”

“You know, work in a club. Or cook, maybe.”

I opened my evening bag and searched through my wallet until I found Mercedes’s business card. “Give Mercedes a call. She might be able to help. Tell her your mom’s Juanita and Milagro told you to call.”

Frankie was staring at the card as we left the restaurant.

I said to Ian, “He’s just going to go out and rob again, isn’t he?”

“So I’d wager, Young Lady. Would you like me to check up on him later?”

“That would be nice.”

“I would only do it for you,” Ian said, and then he called his driver, who met us a block away. As I sat in the backseat of the car, I stared out the window, hoping I would be able to remember it all.

We neared a river and I saw a bridge sparkling with lights. “It’s so beautiful. This country is so beautiful.” I suddenly felt sad. “Nixon, or whoever he really is, told me that I’d never be fully accepted as an American.”

“Nixon’s a sly one. He’s playing upon your weakness-your desire to be accepted.” Ian turned to me with a smile, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness of the car.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a normal human desire.”

“My dear girl, normal and human isn’t enough for you.”

“No, normal and human isn’t enough for you. I would be delighted with normal and human,” I said, but he had made me feel better.

When we got back to the house, Ian asked, “Would you like to see the garden? It was designed to be enjoyed at night.”

“I’d like that. I’ve only seen the tops of the trees from my window.”

“Come then.” He led me through the hallways to a breakfast room with French doors opening onto the backyard. He flipped a switch and lights glowed on the stone paths.

As we walked into the garden, I inhaled the fragrance from aromatic herbs that were planted in formal circles. We walked into a small grove of ancient birch trees with papery white trunks. In the center of the grove was a small amphitheater with two concentric rows of marble benches. Ian said, “When our people first lived in this house, they held ceremonies here. It’s one of our oldest sites in this country.”

“The birches are beautiful,” I said, listening to their long graceful branches swish and whisper in the light breeze.

Ian took a gold penknife from his pocket and I held my breath as I wondered what he was going to do. Then he cut three switches from the trees, folded the knife, and put it away, and began braiding the switches.

“You know how to braid?”

“I used to braid my sister’s hair.”

I watched as he twisted the birch branches into a wreath. He placed it atop my head and then took my hands. The warmth and tingling spread throughout my body and I was aware only of Ian-his brown eyes so dark they looked black in the shadows, his aquiline nose, and the sense of power that emanated from him.

“You’ve never heard our language spoken correctly.” He began speaking softly in the strange language. From his mouth, the words had a compelling, lyrical quality.

“I’ll teach you,” he said. He uttered some words, and I repeated the sounds, surprised that I could pronounce them.

I felt the blood rising in my skin, almost as if it was moving toward Ian. I thought I could hear the blood flowing in his veins. I wondered what it would be like to bite into his flesh, to once again fill my mouth with his intoxicating blood. “What does it mean?”

“It means that my blood is your blood, my life is yours,” he said, moving close. “Don’t go back, Milagro. Stay with me.”

I stepped back, pulling my hands away. “Why do you do this? You know that I love Oswald, and he loves me.”

“He may think he loves you, but he’s been in love half a dozen times since I’ve known him. He’s addicted to your blood.”

“That’s impossible. I don’t even let him drink it anymore. I haven’t since…” I hadn’t craved Oswald’s blood since Ian had given me his own. “I love him.”

“You’re mistaking your love for his family with love for the first vampire you had sex with.”

“But Ian, you were the first vampire I had sex with-and I don’t love you. It was just sex, a meaningless fling.” The words sounded far harsher than I’d intended, and I said quietly, “What would we have had anyway, Ian? A few weeks of partying until the next Ilena came along?”

“I would be by your side, Milagro, and you would be the woman you’re meant to be.” There was anger in his voice. “The longer you stay with Grant, the more he’ll try to make you into a conventional, ordinary wife, and you’ll both grow to resent each other.”

“You don’t know me, or what I want in life.” I wanted a home, family, love, a normal life.

“I knew you the moment I set eyes on you. I knew you the moment I tasted you. I know you every time I touch you and feel something I feel with no one else.”

“You can’t know someone that way.” I pulled the beautiful red ring from my finger and held it out. “I shouldn’t be wearing this. Please don’t send me any more gifts.” When he didn’t take it back, I let the ring drop to the ground.

I ran inside and up the stairs to my room and shut the door behind me. My hands were shaking as I took the birch wreath from my head.

home is where you hang your bat

I had a restless night but had finally fallen asleep. There was a knock on my door. “Come in,” I said. I didn’t know if I hoped it was Ian or not.

Ms. Smith came in with a breakfast tray. “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” I said.

She placed the tray on my lap. “The driver will be back in time to take you to the airport this afternoon. Lord Ian asked me to tell you good-bye for him.”

“Ian’s gone?”

“He left early to meet Ilena.” Ms. Smith went to open the drapes. It was a beautiful morning. “I’m glad he’s found someone after all he’s been through.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked puzzled. “You know about his parents?”

I shook my head.

“Not everyone is meant to be a parent,” she said kindly.

“My mother Regina wasn’t.” I doubted that Ian’s parents could have been more unfit than the woman who’d filled a kiddie pool to the brim and left me in there alone as a toddler.

“He’s always been so responsible, even when he was a boy. He insisted they take in Cornelia. She was such a beautiful child, you can’t imagine, but frail and traumatized after her parents’ deaths.”

“She seems so confident now.” When I tried to imagine Ian and Cornelia as children, I envisioned them in miniature form.

“He brought her out of her shell, and now that he’s found someone special, we hope that Cornelia will find someone, too.”

Just as she seemed about to say something else, to confide in me, my cell phone rang.

Although Ms. Smith still smiled, her expression became more closed. “I’ll leave you to your business.”

Mercedes was calling. “I’ve got some info for you.”

“Talk to me.”

“My subway expert knows of a few locations, including one near the address you gave me, with suspiciously high electrical usage and other odd things. He thinks there’s an abandoned tunnel there, one that’s not on any known maps.”

“Does he know any possible routes to this hypothetical tunnel?”

“He’s got a few ideas, but he’s never actually tried to get in that area. Milagro, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that I might do a little spelunking. Where does your pal think access to the tunnel may be?”

She told me and added, “Don’t do anything too stupid. A lot of crazies live down there, too.”

“Worry not about my safety, O brown damsel.”

“I’m not worried about you getting hurt,” she said very quietly. “I’m worried about you hurting someone.”

I worried about that, too. “I only whack people upside the head when they deserve to be whacked upside the head.”

I dressed in my black suit so I looked like any other competent and capable city girl. I told Ms. Smith that I was going out for a walk and I’d be back in a few hours, and then I took off to find the vamp cave. On the way to the suspect address, I saw a manila envelope at the top of a trash bin and picked it up.

The building was in the middle of a block, brand spanking new, stainless steel and glass, and I was able to go right by the security desk, carrying my envelope as if I were delivering something. It was only when I got in the elevator that I saw that the button to the basement required a key. You didn’t need an F.U. degree to guess that the stairway access to the basement would also be locked.

I had been unceremoniously let go from enough jobs to know that the majority of workers were sadly in need of interesting diversions. I unbuttoned my blouse until the lace from my bra peeked out.

Returning to the main floor, I surveyed the three security guards stationed around the lobby. An appealingly beefy guy with his hair cut close to his head was sitting at a desk in the corner and wearing a suit with the firm badge. I strolled over to him and smiled. “I need to talk to your supervisor.”

His hazel eyes took in the view and he returned my smile. “I’m the supervisor. What do you need?”

I inched closer to him and dropped my voice. “I need to get to the basement. I left something down there.”

“Access is restricted,” he said.

“Tell me about it. I left my key down there.”

“Who gave you a key? Who are you?”

I’d always been an ace at pop quizzes even when I hadn’t studied. The trick was to choose the most likely answer. Who was most likely to be at the top of any vampire power structure?

I said, “He likes it when I call him George. Or President Washington. I’m Honey, his special friend, but he’ll be mad at me if he knows I forgot the key.”

The security guard wanted so much to believe my story, but he had to ask, “Why don’t you go through the Presidential Properties building?”

“Mrs. Smith spies for all the wives, you know. Some women want to neuter men,” I said and leaned low to give him maximum diversion. “But I admire masculinity. I honor it.”

The security guard swallowed. I was about to say that George Washington liked it when I dressed in a trilby hat, see-through plastic platforms, and nothing else, when the security guard said, “I can let you downstairs. You want a flashlight?”

“You’re fabulous!”

He opened a desk drawer and took out a big metal flashlight. We went into the elevator and he sorted through his key ring, selected a small key, and inserted it in the lock. Then he pushed the button for the basement.

When the door opened to a dark basement he said, “Do you want me to come with you?”

“I’d love you to come with me,” I said huskily. “But then Mr. President would have to fire you. I know the way.”

I walked into a hallway. The rooms off it were filled with machinery and office furniture. I glanced in one room filled with cleaning supplies and was about to leave when something caught my attention.

Against the wall was a rack of hats and a shelf with bottles of expensive sunblock. A few seconds later I discovered a hatch in the floor under a blue industrial rug. I opened the hatch and saw a ladder leading down into darkness.

I climbed down the ladder, feeling chilly dampness. It led to a narrow corridor. It was so utterly dark that even I couldn’t see. I turned on the flashlight and slowly made my way along the corridor, at the end of which was a narrow, low-ceilinged stairwell.

By the time I had walked down three sets of stairs and along as many walkways, I had lost all sense of direction. I wondered how much farther down I had to go, but there were no more stairs. I turned a corner and saw grayness ahead. I had arrived at the vampires’ lair.

It had looked impressive with the lights on. Now it just looked spooky. The darkness seemed to shift and move like a living thing. I wanted to know what was behind the arched doors. The one closest to the marble-topped conference table opened to a large lounge area, complete with sofas, a television, and a kitchenette filled with unmarked vials of blood. There was a full bathroom off this room. A vampire rumpus room, I thought.

The next door was locked. At the far end of the cavern was another door, unlocked. I opened it and saw three small cells behind iron bars. Chains were bolted to the walls by the bare mattresses. In one cell there was a half-filled plastic cup of water, as if someone had been there recently.

I’d taken too long already. I’d seen enough, so I hurried back the way I’d come along the corridors and up the stairs. As I climbed up the ladder and saw the dim light from the open hatch, I felt a rush of relief.

I pulled myself out of the hatch and stood up.