Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (61 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

   
ANNIE AND ALASTAIR CAME OUT OF MADAME TUSSAUDS WAX MUSEUM and
were most impressed. Annie especially liked Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Leonardo DiCaprio and
Princess Diana.
She thought
Leonardo was so handsome
that she wished she could take him home and stand him in the corner
.
Alastair was most fascinated by Madonna and Elvis.

    Their relationship was progressing faster than Annie expected
.

  
Annie carried her rose with her almost everywhere, and until the butterfly showed up she could
n’t
relax. Thankfully, the butterfly usually made its appearance
in the morning, but one day
it didn’t show up until seven
in the evening
, and she was sure she had missed it
until there it was
.
She had always had a fa
scination with butterflies,
that’s why Alastair had hit the jackpot with that gift.
She danced in the field with them when she was eight.
They represented the beauty of nature and seeing one on her rose every single day was a gift that was born out of anticipation; she never knew what type of butterfly was going to show up.

   
This
time the
butterfly
showed up in the wax museum, the rare glasswinged butterfly
(Greta oto)
mostly found in Mexico
and Panama
, lit on her rose and started to draw a crowd until it flew off and out of sight.
The border of its wings was orange with a splash of yellow.
Annie was fascinated by it as a large part of its wings were like glass and
see-through.
She had never seen one before and it made her laugh
.

    Outside the museum Annie glanced at the Justin Bieber sign with the two exclamation points
. “I enjoyed that
more than I thought I would
. That was a good idea to come here Alastair.”

    Alastair was glad to hear it. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given you that magical rose as you seem obsessed with it. You can’t think of anything else until you see the butterfly.
Some mornings I can’t even talk to you until it shows up.
”

    “
Oh you exaggerate.
It is a bit silly I suppose, but until I see that butterfly I’m beside myself.
I know it
’
s
coming but I can’t relax until I see it.
”  They kissed as they started to walk
, and for the moment they were both satisfied with life
.

    “Annie, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but on occasion,
I think he said twice a year
, you will see two instead of one.”

    Her face lit up at the prospect of seeing two butterflies on the same day. “
No, really?
And what does it mean if I see two?”

   
They walked by the MacDonald’s restaurant as she continued to stare at the rose.
She took in the flower’s
scent which appeared to have changed slightly. She waved at a young business woman that passed her as if to say
look what I have
.

    “Two
means one more than one.”

   
Annie showed him a smirk.
“
Why won’t you tell me how much you paid for it
?”

    “Annie, why do you continue to ask that same question? I will only say that I paid more than I should have.
The date on that line of questioning
has now officially expired.
They have places to wean people off of drugs; perhaps we can find one to wean you off that flower. What would happen if one morning you awoke to find that I’d hidden your rose?”

    She didn’t like the sound of that. The fact that he had mentioned it was perhaps proof that he had entertained the thought. “Well, I would imagine that that beautiful mansion of yours would become a mountain of wood and rubble, as if a tornado had gone through it
searching for a rose
.”

    “A tornado named Annie
.”

   
She touched his face with the rose and then made him bend down to her level so she could kiss him.
“Alastair, tell me something about yourself that I might not want to hear. You
know
something sordid about your past.”

   
He immediately stopped.
“You want me to tell you something that might actually chase you away? I don’t believe I want to play this game.
I was a different vampire in the past.
”

    The area
was a busy place with lots of people walking. Eight police cars lined one side of the street, with eight on the other. A young blond boy was following the couple; he had a spell on him to remain undetected.
Having been turned so young had its advantages because not many would suspect such a nice looking boy
dressed in new cl
othes to be up to something
.

    “Honesty will always bring you closer to a woman.”
Her smile was like a beautiful sunset over the ocean to the old vampire.
She could get things out of him that no one else could.

    “Annie, honesty with some women will bring you a hit in the head
or a knife in the heart
. But all right, a long long time ago I used to be a bit of a bad guy. I killed a few people that shouldn’t have been kil
led. Innocents
.”

    She looked at Alistair in a different light. The thing
she now worried about
was had he
really
changed or was he just pretending?
Men were great pretenders with most having
enough talent in that area to be nominated for
an academy award she was sure.
But the fact that he told her was bo
th enlightening and spoke of a changed
character.
She knew that p
eople did change if they sincerely wanted to change. “How long ago?”

    “Over three hundred years. See, now you look at me with different eyes. Suddenly, I am a different vampire, a monster. Are we now finished? Are you going to run off? I should have known better than to tell the truth.”

    Annie could see that he was genuinely distraught. “
Vampire, you need to r
elax, if you are a bad guy
it’ll come out in time and
I will kill you and eat you, bones and all.
I’ve always been a pretty good judge of c
haracter.
” She kissed his hand
and felt him relax.
That kiss was the best medicine.

   
The boy, a
vampire thief by the name of Maxwell blurred by and grabbed Annie’s rose and took off. What made the boy vampire such a good thief was his exceptional speed.
He was over a hundred years old so not really a boy in that sense.
They took off in pursuit but they simply couldn’t keep up with him
.
The lad
was gone and so was that magnificent rose.

    “Not my rose! Alastair, can you get me another one?
Please.
”

    “That’s just it Annie. That rose was one of three, made hundreds of years
ago by some powerful wizard,
that’s why I paid so much for it.
The other two were sold long ago.
Maybe we can track down that boy.”

    Annie
thought the chances of that was probably nil
. “Now I’m depressed.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

    T
HE SUN WAS A FOOT HIGH
in the sky and the morning had all the qualities to mak
e one happy to be alive, bright
and warm
with nature’s scented atmosphere
.
The birds were singing and the ground hogs were digging.
A deer looked on from the edge of the forest but then quickly ran off into the deeper woods.
Inside the small
red shingled
house Dorian was putting the final touches on the spell to bind the two eagle feather
s
to the last strand of h
is brother’s hair. He had given
up
on locating the other strand;
it was simply an impossible task
.
He would probably go mad before it was located.
It had depressed him to such a degree that
his frame of mind had forced him to abandon the search for it.