Vampire Blood (17 page)

“It’s been hot?” His gaze rested on her embarrassed face.

“Yes, but it hasn’t been bad in here. Until you get the air conditioners checked out and updated, we’ve brought some fans in.” She gestured at them as they circulated air from the corners of the lobby. “They help, as do the high ceilings.”

He looked at the fans and nodded approvingly then inspected the work they’d already done on the theater.

“You and your father are doing an excellent job. It’s beginning to look like it did before.” The poignancy in his deep voice caught her attention.

“Before when?”

He smiled coyly, not replying, and ceremoniously offered her the books he had clutched in his right hand.

“They’re your
books, Jenny. I told you I had all three of them. Would you sign them for me?” Obsession gleamed in his eyes.

Jenny couldn’t say no. She took the dog-eared paperbacks and the pen he handed her and scribbled her name in each of them. It’d been a long time since she’d been asked to do that. She couldn’t deny that it was flattering.

“Thank you, Jenny.” He cradled the books tenderly against his chest. “I’ll treasure them always.”

Jenny smiled self-consciously and continued picking things up.

“My dad will be back in a minute, and we’ll call it a day,” she explained. “I’ll finish cleaning up here. Where’s the rest of the family?” Jenny made conversation, wishing her father would hurry up and get back. The way Michelson was watching her made her nervous.

“The others are out somewhere, and Annie had some things to pick up in town, I believe.”

Jenny had cleaned and gathered up everything she could. Exhausted, she settled down with a groan on the bottom velvety step. “Mister Michelson, out of curiosity, was your wife ever a dancer?”

“Yes, a ballerina.” He seemed delighted that she would ask. “How did you know?”

“The way she moves.” She glanced up at him from the steps.

“Are all writers that observant?” He complimented her thoughtfully.

“Some, I guess. Truth is, I don’t know many other writers,” she admitted.

Mister Michelson sat down gracefully a few steps above her, laying her books to one side. He smiled at her and lifted his violin up to rest under his chin.

He began to play so softly, so sweetly, it made Jenny’s heart ache. She listened raptly, and almost against her will reality began to slip away as the music and his dark eyes held hers.

His voice, a low and secretive whisper, blended with the music hypnotically. “Annie was a prima ballerina in Hungary when I first met her over seventy years ago. She was so lovely. I watched her on the stage in her lace and silk. I watched her dance ... a beam of sunshine I could never have. I, a creature of the night and the dark, of the grave.”

Jenny’s eyelids felt heavy. Her head light.

“I had lived such a long time. Too long, I think. I had grown weary of living, but I found her. I loved her as I had never loved another ... so I took her. Made her one of us, Jenny. I was wrong. She had a pure heart, a sparkling soul.” He sighed, and the music soared.

Jenny heard it, but as in a dream; she was unable to respond.

“Ah, we are only as strong afterwards as the original corruption of our souls ... my poor beloved, fragile Annie. Jenny,” he rasped mournfully, “you were right in your books. Some of us have hearts that bleed, and some of us hunger for what we will never possess again. The light. Goodness. Some of us aren’t evil. Some are. Jenny, do not condemn us unjustly for we cannot help what we are.” He must have seen the dawning comprehension, the fear in her eyes and nodded sadly, knowing what he must do. He’d gone too far. As he played, he willed it, the forgetting, and she closed her eyes.

When the music changed, and she opened her eyes again, she believed but a few moments had passed and she’d forgotten all he’d said.

The music, so sad,
her only thought. It made her think of her missing friends. Maude would have loved Mister Michelson’s playing. Without realizing it, as she leaned against the banister, tears silently slid down her cheeks.

After the song, his slender fingers reached down the few feet between them and brushed her cheek, collecting her tears. “Jenny, what is the matter? You seem so melancholy tonight. You look so weary. If this job is doing that to you, then you must take a few days off, I insist.” His eyes were compassionate. “I don’t want you to suffer in any way.”

Jenny was taken aback at the affection in the older man’s manner, yet it made her uneasy. He hardly knew her, except for her books that he’d read.

Why did some people believe they knew the very secrets of her soul, just because they’d read her books? She wasn’t her books. No one could really know her like that.

“No, it’s not the work, Mister Michelson. Some friends of ours have been,” she hesitated then went on, “missing for some time now. I’ve been so worried about them.”

“What friends?” There was a sudden coldness in his tone.

“Remember that other job, the house we were painting when I first met you?”

“Yes, I recall.”

“Maude and George Albers, very old, close friends of the family. Maude was more a mother to me when I was growing up than ...” she halted her words abruptly. Why was she telling him all this anyway?

“Go on, Jenny.”

When she met his eyes, she had no choice but to comply. “Than my own mother. They’ve been missing for nine days now. I’ve been sick about it. Dad has been, too. They disappeared one night from their house, during the time we were still working on it, and no one’s seen them since.” Jenny wiped the fresh tears from her face. “Along with the other awful things that have been occurring—”

“What other things?” he interrupted, his voice controlled, yet a growing anger flickering in his eyes.

“The last two of my dad’s horses were butchered,
”
Jenny spat out the last word, shuddering. “There have been other mutilated and dead animals found in the area recently. Other people are disappearing. You must have read about it in the paper?”

“I don’t read the newspapers,” he muttered tersely. The violin was under his chin again. He brought the bow up and resumed playing softly.

The music soothed her.

She thought he whispered between the bittersweet notes, “I’m so sorry, Jenny.”

Her father hobbled back in at that moment, so she didn’t have a chance to continue their conversation.

“The old station wagon didn’t want to start. I had to coax her some.” Seeing the dried tears staining her dusty face, he threw her a questioning look. “You ready to go, honey?”

“Just about.” She stood up and finished what she’d been doing before Michelson had walked in, while her dad launched into a series of questions with their employer.

He’d mapped the work out earlier to Jenny and figured out it would take two more weeks, if they worked nine and ten hour days. He told Michelson that.

Jenny said good-bye to Michelson, while her father was chatting with him, and slipped out to the car, still unnerved.

It was black outside and raining. As she sat out in the rumbling car, she began to shiver.

She couldn’t seem to remember half of her conversation with Michelson. She remembered he’d played the violin for her and they’d talked, but about what, exactly, for the life of her, she couldn’t recollect. It bothered her. It bothered her more than she could say.

There was something truly strange about it all—about Mister Michelson, too. In that moment, she was sure he was hiding something... but what?

Propping her head against the car window, she watched the rain dribble down the glass on the other side. She was so tired.
When her father finally came out, she was glad. Glad when they headed for home.

* * * *

“You told her too much.” Irene warned, mockingly. “You, who is always telling us to beware of them.”

She’d been glaring out the window in the front of the theater as the car drove away into the rain.

“She won’t remember a thing I told her. Consciously, anyway. I made sure of that.” His eyes were mere slits, as if to hide his true feelings. “She’s special, Irene. One of the
special
ones,” he said more to himself than to her.

“None of them are special,” Irene breathed. “They’re cattle. We drink their blood.” She waited a moment then laughed scornfully. “Do you think she will write that story of yours? Do you really believe you could tell her the truth about us, and then not fear what she would do with the knowledge? Now who’s the fool?” A hostile glimmer stole into her eyes, and she smiled slyly, showing her fangs. “She should die
now before she guesses the truth,” came her heartless whisper.

He turned on her, his eyes unreadable in the inky theater.
“Stay away from Jenny,”
he hissed the words out between clenched teeth,
“and her family and friends!
I’m warning you.
”

Irene scowled at him, and he could feel her trying to probe into his mind. Moments later she lowered her eyes and laughed disdainfully. “You win. This time.”

This time.

It was getting harder to resist her control. One day he wouldn’t walk away. He wouldn’t be able to best her. He had to think of Annie. Annie depended on him to protect her from the others. She wasn’t like them, and they hated her for it. They’d destroy her if they could, if not for him.

He looked up to see Irene studying him from a distance, a taunting look on her beautiful ageless face.

Without a sound, she began to disintegrate, becoming a spectral reflection in the mist that eddied around the carpeted floor and then ... nothing.

We’re safe as long as she doesn’t start displaying her kills again,
he mulled silently.

He didn’t trust her. Her soul, evil enough in her own brief lifetime millennia ago, had been totally corrupted with the long centuries, and he had no doubt it was unredeemable now. He didn’t know how ancient she was; perhaps even she’d forgotten. One lost count after the first couple of thousand years.

The others, he’d begun to suspect, he couldn’t trust, either. They belonged body and soul to Irene now.

T. J., or Tomas, he’d discovered wasting away in Egypt, curled up in the shadow of a pyramid, dying, with his blood poisoned by a bad kill. He’d nursed the fledgling vampire back to health. Tomas’s gratefulness, like sands in an hourglass, though, had just about run out. Vampires weren’t known for their loyalty.

Candice, he’d found cringing in a musty mausoleum in a Paris cemetery and suffering from the loneliness fever. Nearly twenty years ago now? He wasn’t sure. Time didn’t matter when you had so much of it to live. He’d pitied her, bedraggled and nearly insane from the heavy toll of the years, as he, himself, had often suffered. As all vampires eventually suffered, if they lived long enough.

No, he couldn’t count on either of them. They were weak, while Irene was strong.

He turned, retrieving his violin and his books from the steps, and slowly started up the stairs. He was gone before his feet touched the top landing. The theater was empty again. Until morning.

Chapter Eight

Predawn August 29

Ernest Lacey slept soundly and had for about the last week or so. The nightmares had ceased. He no longer woke up every morning drained of energy and muddleheaded.

He’d toppled into bed early that Thursday night after working hard all week with his daughter on that fancy theater. He was dreaming about when he and Estelle had been young, and so in love, before the kids had come along. They were laughing together in bed, snuggling and confessing silly secrets to each other. Her skin, fragrant and soft to his hot touch, was so white it looked like the milk they used to have delivered to their door every morning when their marriage was new.

In his dream, Estelle was still a pretty young thing. Shining eyes the color of milk chocolate. Delicate heart-shaped face framed in a soft reddish halo of curly hair. She had been a beauty in her time, and all the other boys had envied him so. He smiled in his sleep and rolled over hugging his pillow, pretending it was his absent wife.

He missed her so damn much.

Then the Albers intruded into his lovely dream and shattered his happiness.

You’re missing, you two. Did you know that?
he asked them, sitting up in bed next to Estelle, angered, but for what reason precisely, he couldn’t say. They were
old
in his dream, and their faces were beaten and bruised, bloody; their pathetic eyes begged him to help them. They looked like those zombies in that awful movie he’d watched the other night: white with scabs all over, tattered clothes and stringy hair.

Suddenly he looked at Estelle, and she was old, too,
old and wrinkled, and drunk,
climbing out of their warm, cozy bed, and leaving him. She bumped into the slightly ajar door, and after she’d disappeared out onto the landing, he heard her tumble down the stairs in her drunken stupor.

Then he was alone in his drafty farmhouse.

He raised his hands and realized, with a shock, that the years had found him again as well.