Twice Bitten (24 page)

Franz’s expression turned serious, glancing at me while Garvan lowered his shades to glare at Armando.

“You two take everything
so
seriously!” sniffed Armando, in obvious mock contrition. “I will take my leave of you and visit Chanson.”

Before I could tell him that I wanted to come along, he was gone. Not even a blur. These guys and gals must have some sort of hyper-speed when they get really miffed.

“We do not party like this every night,” said Garvan, in response to my earlier question. “Yes, we try to have as much fun as possible, and parties are frequent. Part of what you have been treated to these past few days is our celebration for your continued safety. At some point, Gustav plans to taper off the constant pampering, so you are not overwhelmed. And, in truth, that will now happen sooner than expected. But, tonight…tonight will be one of our most festive events in recent years!”

“Why?” I asked, without thinking my full question through first. I didn’t like the way Garvan said ‘sooner than expected’. 

It sounded a little ominous, as if something bad had happened, and that the original plan shared with me last night had changed. Chanson’s surreal angry face flashed before my mind, and I hoped I hadn’t pissed off the vampires beyond an apologetic repair.

“The answer to your question will be answered soon,” a mellow voice to my right suddenly announced. I nearly jumped since it sounded so close to my ear, like an abrupt boom that faded to a whisper. When I turned my head, Gustav stood beside me, dressed in another papal robe and cap, only the dominant colors were gold and a deep, rich purple. “But first, you must nourish yourself. Come, join me at the table.”

He held out his hand for me to take, and I was surprised when his hand felt warm. I noticed then that his alabaster complexion seemed more blushed than the previous night. I also saw that his fingernails were longer, with predatory tips sharpened to keen edges. A slight golden glow emanated from his eyes. The king of vampires had either recently fed, or some other fiery force energized him to where he stood out even more against his peers than the previous night.

As before, he motioned for me to join him next to his throne, motioning to the servant girl standing next to the roasted bird I so admired to cut me a serving and bring it up to where I sat. Another glance around the room revealed Chanson, Raquel, and Nora had moved to a corner with Armando. Dressed in exotic flamenco style, they were engaged in an animated discussion. I assumed it was serious until I heard Armando’s uproarious laughter while the female trio smiled at what he told them.

Still, there was no sign of Racco, and I began to worry for his welfare.

“Perhaps you would like merlot again tonight, or do you have another preference?” asked Gustav, his tone laced with compassion.

“Actually, maybe a lighter wine would be better,” I said, thinking that merlot at this castle would come from Racco’s private stock, which would make me think of him all the more. “Do you have something simple, like maybe zinfandel?”

“I believe so…. Mercel?”

Racco’s trusted assistant appeared, stepping around a bar nearby. I hadn’t noticed his presence, but seeing him now made me feel better about things…better about Racco’s absence. Maybe things would be okay after all, for both of us. At least that’s what I took from Mercel’s warm smile and carefree gait as he approached the table.

“A glass of the finest zinfandel for the lady in honor,” said Gustav.

“Yes, I shall pour her a glass and bring it over.” 

He bowed to us both and hurried back to the bar. He returned a moment later with my preferred beverage for the evening.

“Would you enjoy a salad with your dinner?” Gustav asked me, after waving off Mercel’s offer to prepare an RH negative cocktail for him, apparently his usual preference.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, between bites of what I assumed was chicken. Either that or the biggest Cornish hen I’d ever seen. It was excellent, as was the wine—obviously another cherished bottle from Racco’s collection. “This is quite good.”

“Excellent!” he beamed. 

He turned his attention to the party around us while I ate. As the night before, the vampires feasted on blood at room temperature from several vats nearby and an extra two punchbowls on the table. Meanwhile, I caught Chanson studying me from her corner of the room. Wearing a slight smile on her face, I assumed she might suddenly appear before me. But for the time being she remained where she was, and soon returned to her conversation with Raquel and Nora. Armando had disappeared, and when I looked over at Garvan and Franz, who had joined a group of females dressed in early Renaissance Italian attire, he wasn’t with them either.

Perhaps to distract me from my Racco quest, Gustav engaged me in conversation. I thought it might be painful, given my initial impressions of him the night before.  Pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t, we talked about my aborted studies in America and what life was like growing up in Virginia. It wasn’t until he signaled to the rest of the room that he had an important announcement to make, I realized he had expertly gotten me to talk about myself, and yet, said nothing about him. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing, or not.

The room grew quiet, as Gustav rose from his throne. At the moment, he was the only one floating in the room, as the others either gathered in small groups or took a seat at the table. I wondered if the groups represented some sort of geographical separation. I doubted seriously that all of them originated from France, or even resided here on a full-time basis. Hearing the variety of dialects and accents around me during the past two nights supported this notion.

Racco stood just inside the doorway, dressed in the same Body Armor, I assumed, and wearing a casual beige dress coat and jeans. I think I said before that it wouldn’t matter how the man dressed, as he is always gorgeous. But, either he didn’t see me—or worse—chose not to acknowledge my presence next to the throne. I wanted to go to him and say something… to find
some
way to reconnect. However, Gustav had already begun to address his flock.

“My brothers and sisters, compatriots of the dark gift we’ve shared freely for so many centuries. As you all know, our way of life—the manner in which we have ruled this continent and the very world—is now threatened in ways unseen before….”

I tried to take it all in, and to do so seriously, praying to God that my irreverent thoughts would somehow go undetected by the undead throng gathered around me. I definitely didn’t want Gustav to gain any telepathic inkling as to what I thought about the grandiose manner in which he addressed the crowd of vampires gathered in the dining hall. Hell, if his flamboyant cap had covered his eyes, it would seem as if the Ku Klux Klan’s Grand Dragon spoke instead. That thought brought a wry smile to my face, which I’m sure someone would’ve noticed.

But, he continued on undeterred. I caught most of what he said, and the important thing was that the castle would soon be under siege. When he mentioned the name ‘Ralu’, though, I went from an irreverent observer to fully engaged believer. He had my rapt attention from that point forward.

“So, Ralu is the one behind the uprisings taking place throughout Europe?”

The question was posed by a stately gentleman sitting in a chair near where Racco stood. Undoubtedly an older vampire, and one turned to darkness later in life, his long white hair and youthful features reminded me of Nora. The entire room turned to look in his direction until Gustav answered him.

“Yes, Kazikli, it is him,” confirmed Gustav, his tone solemn. “He has reassembled an army in the old country—yours and my former home. A new version of
Diavolului Respinge
has risen from the depths of the earth, where we sent them to live out their miserable existence almost three hundred years ago.”

“But, how can the ‘Devil’s Rejects’ become formidable so quickly?” asked another vampire, this one much younger. From the disdainful looks from several others near him, it appeared he wasn’t held in high esteem.

“They have figured out how to proliferate,” Gustav replied, and the underlying tone seemed benevolent—different than I would’ve expected, given my intuitions about him. My volleying respect jumped back up a notch. “It is no longer an intelligent Ralu leading a bunch of imbeciles. They are no longer far beneath us…they have learned to procure the living for food and to build their numbers. They now easily assimilate knowledge, where as you know, they once were half-wits easily routed by farmers armed with clubs and pitchforks. They no longer make the same mistake twice….”

He grew quiet, and then glided through the air until he reached the middle of the room. Still hovering above the table, all eyes remained upon him, all of us waiting expectantly for him to continue.

“Their army now exceeds thirty-two thousand,” he advised, once ready to speak again. “Most are here in Europe, although as you shall see in a moment, their presence is known throughout the world. As a result, we are all in danger—them and us. The world’s powers have turned a deaf ear to my voice, and will seek to destroy us all unless Ralu is stopped.”

“How can we do that if he has amassed an army as intelligent as you claim they are?” said the vampire Kazikli, rising to his feet. Definitely the most regal vamp that night in terms of dress, he tapped his gold-tipped cane on the floor, sending forth streams of purple plasma light from the point of impact. “We number only four-hundred and seventy-eight—nearly half of whom are gathered here tonight! They will cut us down like wounded flies if we chase them through the chasms, and might not fare any better if we await their attack on your ‘Le château de douleur’!”

The vampire glared in anger at his king, although the way these two conversed made it obvious to me that they had been colleagues in the blood drinking biz for many centuries.

“I know Ralu…better than any of you,” said Gustav, finally, after nearly a minute spent in thoughtful silence. “If we perform the ceremony…the
Relance de sang
, before his Romanian army storms the castle, he will back off. He wants the gift, just as we do, if for no other reason than to keep us from using it.”

“None of us want to perish, oh King,” said a woman in the back, who turned out to be Nora once she stood. “What must
we
do?”

Could she have been any more obvious in her set up for Gustav to close the deal here?

“You…all of you need to remain here in support, and do whatever it takes to hold his army out of the castle’s passages,” he said, and the confident smile on his face reeked of a ‘Tony Robbins breakthrough’. “We must hold them out until Txema conceives a child.”

Huh??

They all looked at me—whether vampire, slicing-meat servant girl, bartender, or lord of the manor. I could feel self-conscious heat rush to my face, but I also felt indignant. I wanted to tell them that in addition to the fact I wasn’t about to be some frigging surrogate mom for whatever bloodlust ceremony they’d concoct, I couldn’t do it. Not even if I wanted to. I suffer from a rare disorder called Stein Levanthal Syndrome, which has made me sterile since the onset of my adolescence.

I hated the way Gustav studied me—obviously reading my thoughts and then smiling anyway. He nodded his head, as if he not only read the words but also heard the panicked voice shouting defiantly in my head.

“Look, Txema, at the television…see what is happening right now around the world!”

He pointed a remote control toward the wall behind me, where two dark curtains separated to reveal what resembled a ‘jumbo-tron’ from a sports auditorium. The plasma screen took up the entire wall on that side of the room—more than a hundred feet wide and roughly forty feet tall. 

“We will start in your country, America,” he advised.  “Here is the latest update from CNN.”

Immediately, a blonde newswoman appeared on the screen, with a ‘Mysterious Mauling Deaths’ headline behind her. Reporting on the latest incident in a string of more than forty deaths across the United States, she commented on how the ‘crisis’ had grown steadily worse since late last week. She closed her update, stating “authorities are no longer ruling out the possibility that a bigger, more violent strain of the Chupacabras phenomenon is responsible for the killings.”

“To save time, I can assure you that similar violence against your fellow humans is taking place from Shanghai to Moscow, and from London to Milan,” said Gustav, pointing the remote again toward the screen. “Here is tonight’s report from Paris, detailing attacks from early this morning near Perpignan.”

Luckily, he changed the format to allow for an English translation to appear at the bottom of the screen. As I’ve said, my French isn’t so good—especially listening to some excited French lady fly through her report. Then again, the graphic description of what happened to the nine victims might’ve sat better with my churning stomach if caught in bits and pieces from the Bridgette-lady’s flowery dialect.

“You can stop all of this, Txema,” Gustav advised, after turning off the giant screen TV. He let out a very deep sigh before continuing. “Ralu will only stop his aggression once he knows you are with child. You are fully aware that he has access to your thoughts as well as your location. If you do not agree to help us, we may not be able to save you from him. We can only run for so long before he will track us down.”

An icy chill raced down my spine as he said this…nearly the same exact words Ralu uttered to me, in my dreams of him. Still, how in the hell could I become pregnant? The vampires possessed some pretty amazing powers, but I sincerely doubted creating a virgin-like birth was one of them.