A Girls Guide to Vampires (6 page)

My smile frayed a bit around the edges as I held out my hand to Tanya, sitting nearest me. She examined my hand as if it might have leprosy, then gave me a sour look and dismissed me as unworthy of her time.
Goths—the poseurs of the underworld.
Where would we be without them?

"Actually, I'm apprenticed to Tanya," the woman named Arielle said as she stood up and leaned over the table to shake my hand. She had a faint Slavic accent mixed in with heavy French. Her friendly washed-out blue eyes were a nice counterpoint to her friend's hostile glare. "I'm not a witch yet, but I hope to be as powerful as my sister in a few years."

"Your sister?"
I asked, pulling out a chair across from Roxy.

"They're sisters," Roxy said helpfully, smiling at Tanya. She ignored both of us, her eyes darting around the room, glancing frequently between the long windows and the door opposite. "I got you a beer. I hope you don't mind if it's dark. That's all they seem to drink here."

Roxy pushed a huge mug toward me. I figured the Czechs must have bladders of iron if they were able to drink that much on a regular basis.

"You'll never guess where Tanya and Arielle work! The GothFaire! Isn't that great? Arielle says they have all sort of attractions like palm readers, and tarot card readers and a medium, a magician, and lots and lots of vampires."

I choked on the tentative sip I was taking of the dark brown beer, just barely keeping it from taking the passage north to my nose.

"I
beg
your pardon?" I asked, licking the foam from my upper lip.

"Vampires," Roxy said happily.
"Loads of them.
Isn't that thrilling?"

"Loads of them," I repeated, looking from Roxy to Tanya to Arielle. "How many is
loads
?"

Although I was curious about the so-called vampires connected with the fair, I wasn't entirely surprised to hear they were present. I had a friend who had flirted briefly with the Goth society in San Francisco, and she told me that vampirism, in its pretense form, was very popular amongst the set. Some of them really got into the image, with cosmetically enhanced canine teeth, drinking animal blood obtained from slaughterhouses (something that was more common than I cared to think about), and living, in general, the vampire life without actually being undead.

"Dominic and Milos, the owners of GothFaire, are
Vampyr
," Tanya answered in a husky, heavily accented voice. She pronounced the word v
ampire
in the affected, artsy-fartsy way that never failed to make my teeth itch.

"Are they? How very interesting," I said brightly.
"And how enterprising of them to own a business.
I wouldn't imagine vampires had much need for money, but I suppose the price of capes and dental care has gone up."

Tanya's kohl-laden eyelids lifted to pierce me with a gaze that would have had more impact on me if her pupils hadn't been dilated.
Drugs, no doubt
, I thought to myself. I'd heard that hallucinogenic drugs were particularly popular with the Goth groups, since they were felt to enhance the user's abilities to have visions. Duh, said I.

"
There's
almost twenty of us with the Faire," Arielle said quickly. "We travel all over Europe, and Dominic pays us a share of the profits, keeping none for himself or Milos."

"Ah," I nodded, willing to let the subject go. I was conscious of a slight feeling of edginess, which I put down to being in a strange country with some extremely strange people. I glanced out the window again, my eyes drawn to the line of
ebony mountain
silhouetted against the now dark sky. Something didn't feel right, but I couldn't decide what it was. After being in Frankfurt for a week, both Roxy and I had adjusted to the time difference, so that wasn't the problem…

Roxy glanced at her watch and asked Arielle when the fair opened.

"One hour after sunset," she said with a shy little smile. She really was cute; it was just too bad that someone had talked her into dying her hair a flat, dull black, and slathering on way too much makeup. I pegged her at about seventeen, and hoped this was an experimental phase she would grow out of quickly.

"Good. We'll go just as soon as we've had dinner, right, Joyful?"

My sense of unease grew. I glanced again at the mountains. What was it they were trying to tell me?
"Hmm?
Sure, if you like. We can take in the sights. Have our palms read, and watch the magic show, and stake a vampire or two through the heart."

"Joy!"

Tanya's eyes snapped open at my words, her nostrils flaring in a manner that reminded me of a horse, an observation I wisely kept to myself. Her fingernails were long, sharply pointed, and painted black. It was entirely possible she'd dipped the tips in poison.

"Sorry." I offered a cheesy smile as a token of friendship. Tanya dismissed it with an impatient snort. Once again her gaze shot to the door.

I decided to offer my olive branch to Arielle. "So, are you guys only here for a drink before the show opens, or would you like to have dinner with us? The owner said the pub grub was supposed to be pretty good."

"Pub grub?" Arielle looked confused.

"The food they serve here in the bar," Roxy said soothingly, shooting me an admonishing glance. "You're welcome to join us; we'd love to find out all about the fair and what you do there, and of course, what it's like to work with two vampires. I mean,
Vampyrs
."

I rolled my eyes.

"We've already had supper," Arielle said quickly, darting a nervous glance to her sister. "We're just here waiting for the men. We always gather in a public location before we open the fair. Dominic says it impresses people and makes them curious about the fair."

"I imagine it also serves as sort of a cattle call, too." At Arielle's blank look, I elaborated. "You know, it lets them look over the available stock of blood donors.
Heh heh heh."

She shot another look at Tanya, and gave me a worried little feeble laugh. Roxy paused in smiling at her long enough to shoot me a warning look that I ignored. She chatted happily with Arielle about the sights at the fair, what her role was (she read tarot cards), and how she enjoyed traveling all over Europe, all the while I sat and fidgeted. The uncomfortable feeling of something portentous heading my way was growing steadily stronger. I had a momentary image in my mind of a shadow stalking through the woods, the scent of pine so strong it almost tickled my nose. I blinked the sensation aside and rubbed the back of my neck as I tried to focus my attention on what Arielle was saying.

"…
was
very nice, but just after we arrived there, someone was horribly murdered in the adjacent town, and the Heidelberg police closed all the roads for a day, so we were late for a show in Aufsdajm."

"Oooh, a murder," Roxy cooed.
"How thrilling.
Did the police grill you?"

A wave of foreboding crashed over me, almost making me gasp with the intensity of it. I looked around the room, trying to decide if it was someone staring at me that was having the affect on me, but no one was looking our way. Maybe I was just tired from a day spent on the train.

"Grill?
They wanted to know if we'd seen the woman who was killed." Arielle's voice trailed away as she fretted with the stem of her glass of beer.

"And had you?" Roxy asked, ever curious.

Arielle swallowed hard, her gaze glued on the tabletop. "Yes, I had. She came to the fair a few days before. I read the cards for her."

"A great many people came to the fair that week, Arielle," Tanya snapped. "I have told you before that you have nothing to feel guilty about."

"But I didn't see the danger," Arielle all but wailed, her pale blue eyes swimming with sudden tears. "I did not see it. I saw nothing. I let her go without warning her at all!"

Tanya leaned forward across Roxy, who plastered herself against the high back of the wooden chair in an attempt to get out of the way. "You… did… nothing… wrong." The words came out hard and short, distracting me for a moment from the gathering blackness I could feel approaching.

"I know you say that, but I should have seen
,
I should have known…" Arielle grabbed for her napkin and wiped at the tears spilling from her eyes.

Tanya spat something out in a language I didn't understand. Whatever it was, it was effective. Arielle nodded, mumbling an apology to us while she mopped up. Roxy went immediately into comfort mode, putting her arm around the young woman and patting her shoulder.

"It's not every day you meet someone who's read tarot cards for a murder victim," I commented chattily, receiving for my efforts identical glares from both Roxy and Tanya.

"It wasn't just the one," Arielle said, blowing her nose delicately. "There was another woman murdered in Le Havre just after we left, and one in Bordeaux three months ago—do you remember, Tanya? She bought a love spell from you the week before. We saw her picture in the paper. She was the latest victim, until Heidelberg."

The room spun into a gray swirl of confusion as the image of a man burst with startling clarity into my mind. He was in black, his features shadowed, silhouetted against the night, walking with long, tireless strides. The wind brushed against him as he moved through the woods, driven by a need I couldn't begin to understand. I was pulled toward him, merged with him until I could feel the blood moving through his veins and the breath on his lips as he approached the town, stalking through the night with an arrogance that bespoke centuries of existence. Through his eyes I saw the lights of the town as they flickered through the pine boughs; when his breath quickened as he inhaled deeply to catch the scents of the town, so did mine. The images in his mind filled mine, thoughts of humans, warm and alive,
their
blood singing a sweet siren song he couldn't resist. He leaped over a drainage ditch, moving swiftly and powerfully up a hill to the outskirts of town, muscles and sinews and tendons working with graceful efficiency. The scent of blood was strong in our nostrils now; the taste of it made our mouths water. I knew from our memory that the feel of it was like nothing I'd ever known, hot and sweet, flowing down my throat—

"JOY!"

I jumped as the horrible sensations faded, leaving me nauseated and shaking, clutching the table as the room dipped and spun around me. It was like the experience I'd had a few weeks prior at Miranda's, but a hundred times more intense, a thousand times more terrible. I hadn't just seen a man this time, I'd merged with him, become part of him,
joined
with him as he stalked his prey. My mind was screaming out demands for information and warnings with equal confusion, and yet in all the chaos, one question repeated itself again and again until it consumed me.

What the hell was happening to me?

Chapter Four

"Are you all right? You look like you're a million miles away, and you're breathing funny. Is it your asthma? You want me to go get your inhaler?" Roxy's voice was tight with worry.

I shook my head to clear the remnants of the… there was no other word for it but
vision
… and pushed the glass of beer away from me with a shaky hand. I still felt sick and dizzy, but it was fading. "Sorry. No, I'm fine.
Just spaced out there for a few minutes.
I guess I'm not meant to be drinking alcohol anymore."

Roxy shot me a curious look, part concern, part exasperation, but said nothing further about it. She chatted to Arielle while I tried to pull myself together, tried to analyze what games my mind was playing on me. It had to be the
beer,
I've never been the type of person to experience anything creepy like that. Not even the ill-fated rune stone reading at the Womyn's Magick Festival had made me feel as if I were a pawn to a force I didn't understand, let alone believe. Either I was having some sort of reaction to the beer, or I was going insane. Maybe that was it, maybe I was going mad. That seemed almost a preferable fate than to thinking the vision I had was real. I licked my dry lips. I could still taste the metallic bite of blood as it flowed over my tongue and down my throat.

"What did you mean, 'latest victim'?" The words were out of my mouth before I realized it. All three women stared at me. Something Arielle had said suddenly seemed to be important. "You mentioned a couple of other women who had been to your fair, women who died afterwards, and you said one was the latest victim. What did you mean?"

"Nothing," Tanya spat. "She meant nothing. There is no connection, as the German police have proven to their satisfaction, so your accusations will serve no purpose."

I pushed the worry of my potential insanity aside, surprised by the intensity of Tanya's verbal attack. "Look, Tanya, I'm sorry if you think I'm accusing you of anything, but I'm not. I'm just curious about what Arielle said about there being more than one murder victim."

"Arielle said nothing of interest," Tanya said sullenly and stared into her beer. I pursed my lips and looked at Roxy. She shrugged. I sat back, ignoring the darkness creeping into my mind to concentrate on the bit of information Arielle had presented. I've always loved murder mysteries, and this seemed like the ideal thing to occupy my mind while I waited for the guys in the white suits to show up and take me away.