3:00 p.m., Geneva, Switzerland
“Mom,
watch this. Mom. Mom. MOM!” Minerva Josephine Victoria Janté chanted her
demands for attention in Valerie Tate’s mind. It was a chant that had gone on.
And on.
All. Day. Long.
Some mothers took tranquilizers. Others
posted on the Internet. Valerie’s own mother had been known to “entertain” good-looking
junior soldiers. Whereas Valerie herself craved the perfect combination of
sweet and salty, caffeine, and nutrition: blood and coke.
How else was a vampire supposed to deal with
the highly advanced psychic powers her child had? Half-angel and half-vampire,
Minerva had abilities no one expected from one so young.
“Let me guess. You are going to drop
something,” she called from the kitchen.
The baby huffed an indignant breath. Valerie
dug her back teeth into her left cheek. No smiling while her child was pouting,
even though her daughter’s Cupid’s bow mouth would be pursed like she was
spitting out something foul. Such a sour expression on her angelic face.
”But
this is cool.”
A familiar clatter told Valerie that Minerva
had dropped yet another utensil. Was that her fiftieth or sixtieth of the day? Really,
how long could one vampire watch her flatware fall to the floor and treat it
like it was the discovery of a new world?
She took a pitcher of blood in one hand, a
cold can of soda in the other, and shoved the appliance’s door closed with her
elbow. The condensation on the can of cola chilled her sweating palms. Summer
in Geneva could
be shockingly hot and humid for a place surrounded by icy mountains. She
smiled. This beverage would be delicious.
Valerie rounded the divider between the
kitchen and the living room. She shook her head in mock awe at the youngest
Dracul’s prowess this afternoon. The floor shone with dropped silverware.
 |
| Minerva |
The game had gone like this: Valerie handed
Minerva a spoon. Minerva dropped the spoon. Valerie handed Minerva a fork.
Minerva dropped the fork. Valerie did not pick any of it up.
She was familiar with intestine-strewn
battlefields, not domesticity. The best she could do was shovel the clinking
lot into the dishwasher and push Clean.
Fortunately, her little family owned a lot of
forks. Somewhere between the small treasures she had carried, John’s
collection, and what Lance had retained from his human life, they were well
supplied with more droppables than the average household.
“Here.” She placed the last salad fork on the
table in front of Minerva. “Go to town, kid.” She set down her pitcher and can.
Her wet hands left pinkish smears of bloody sweat.
Her mouth watering in anticipation of her
cool treat, Valerie poured her dinner.
The two fluids mixed together in a swirl of
red and black.
Red and black. The colors of Mina Harker’s
blood on the hood of Valerie’s ruined car.
Valerie squeezed her eyes closed.
No, she would not remember. She refused to remember. The glass did not
tremble in her hand as the vampiress deliberately sipped her drink. Think it
through. Apply the coldblooded ruthlessness she was famous for.
Valerie swallowed. Old anger flushed her
normally room-temperature body.
It all came back to that book.
That fucking
book.
According to Bram Stoker, Mina, a virtuous
Victorian miss, had been seduced by a vampire named Dracula. He had bitten her
three times, creating a mental connection that had led to his death.
The reality had been somewhat different.
The 1965
Shelby Mustang slammed into Mina Harker’s torso. The woman screamed as the
speeding car broke her spine and splayed her halfway across the hood. She lay perfectly
centered between the two stripes, Valerie dimly noticed through the pain of her
own injuries.
Radu, her little brother, had fallen for Mina
the moment he caught her wood-smoke and lavender scent in the dirty London air. Radu pursued
Mina for the same reasons Vlad had avoided her.
She was the reborn soul of Ilona, Vlad
Dracula’s wife. The woman both brothers loved.
Valerie
jammed the accelerator until she crashed into the concrete wall of the impound
lot’s main building, pinning the already cooling corpse against the crumbling
cement. Mina’s once-white Victorian dressing gown dripped with the waste of
violent death. The fabric had spread over the once-mint condition Mustang,
highlighting the ruin of the last memorial left of a long-lost love.
Just as Radu had captured and turned Ilona,
he stalked and bit Mina. Unlike Ilona, though, Radu did not turn Mina. When she
proved to be less fiery in this incarnation, he left her thrice-bitten, near
immortal, and with unknown powers.
The
dead woman’s glassy eyes filled with blood, her lavender and wood-smoke scent
overwhelmed with the mouthwatering, nose-puckering copper scent of hemoglobin.
The Mustang’s engine whined to its own final death.
Vlad had refused to let her memory ease. He
kept her diamonds in his ears. Every vehicle he had owned, he named for her.
Mina
Harker was at peace.
Vampires
didn’t need to breathe, but she sucked in oxygen, letting its intoxication ease
the discomfort of her injured body.
Mina had gone mad from the centuries after
Radu’s bites. Last spring, Lucifer and his Fallen Angels chose to manipulate
her insanity to forward their own plans. Their interference backfired. Her
powers nearly destroyed Valerie, Lance, John, and the Fallen.
A violent death had been the only way.
Valerie’s
past was gone. Her future lay ahead like clean sand on a nighttime beach.
Valerie rubbed her eyes, trying to scrub the
flashback from her memory. She had killed in numbers untold. Her name was
synonymous with reckless murder. She had seen firsthand the horrors of the Nazi
camps.
Why this death? Why this time? Why couldn’t
she stop remembering? It wasn’t as if Ilona’s soul hadn’t died before. The
first time Ilona died, Radu turned her into a vampire. Years later, Valerie
killed her during Napoleon’s failing campaign in Spain.
Valerie sat at the table next to Minerva’s
high chair. Valerie watched her drink swirl as she pushed the glass around in
small circles. What in the name of Lucifer’s hairy back was going on?
Maybe she was stressed. Much had happened in
the last year. Lance Soliel’s love and his angel blood had transformed her from
a vampire into something with no name. The surprise of falling in love with
John Janté and then bearing a child had cracked her wide open, leaving her
adrift in unfamiliar emotional territory.
The muscles between Valerie’s breasts would
not relax, no matter how often her husbands rubbed them. The sun blared in
through the curtains like a trumpet blast in Valerie’s eyes. She could operate
in direct sunlight since she had drunk from an angel, but the brightness
fatigued her. The ceramic pitcher of blood cooled her forehead.
Misery held her in jagged iron jaws, twisting
her thoughts until sleep was a dim memory.
“Mom,
come on. Watch me.”
Valerie’s fingertips dug into the wooden
tabletop. Her sharp fingernails cut another round of half-moons to join the
collection she had been trying to hide with tablecloths. Soon, her husbands
would discover the marks. What would she do then?
The last fork fell to the ground with a
discordant crash. The high chair clunked. Minerva must have bounced in her
seat.
“Come
pick it up,” the half-angel,
half-vampire child demanded.
Valerie’s eyes opened. Her fingers dug in
harder. No one used that arrogant tone on Valerie. Not since her father had
died. The strain of ignoring the memory, the sun, and her own hunger pushed her
temper. Instead of giving in to her rising irritation, she took a deep,
refreshing slurp of her drink. Easy. It wasn’t Minerva’s fault she sounded just
like Valerie’s centuries-dead father. A father who shaped Dracula into the war
machine that had terrorized the world since the 1400s. The iron-hard muscles in
her back twisted further.
Minerva slapped her little fist on the high chair’s
red plastic tray. ”Do as I say.” Pure
autocratic Dracul command laced the baby’s mental voice.
Valerie’s temper raged beyond reason or
control. Blood hazed her vision. Her teeth grew, her body filled with
supernatural power.
She banged her own fist on the table. With a
great roar, she flung the back of her arm across the messy table. Empty plates
and her half-full tumbler leaped into the air. Blood and cola washed across the
floor like a tidal wave. Thin glass shattered against the floor, spraying the
room with razor-sharp shards. Rough brown pottery smashed into the walls. A cut
opened on Valerie’s temple and more blood poured into her eyes.
Her fangs clashed together inches from her
infant daughter’s nose. “I’m in charge.
Talk back to me and I’ll kill you.”
Minerva burst into frightened tears. Instead
of the normal saltwater drops, the child cried like a vampire. Tracks of blood
ran down her baby-round cheeks. The shriek of her cries penetrated Valerie’s
miasma of fury.
She shuddered to a halt.
Her own father had said those exact words
when she was a child. Now she was saying them to her innocent daughter.
Valerie sat down hard, the chair creaking
beneath the pressure. Despite all the ways she had changed since meeting and
unofficially marrying Lance and John, she remained, at her core, a heartless,
soulless murderer from a family of killers. It would be so easy to destroy this
fragile, unique life.
Thank all that lived that Minerva had not so
much as a scrape on her.
Perhaps the Creator did have mercy.
Now that love had warmed her dead heart and
taught her the meaning of fear, she would not be able to survive if she hurt
her own child.
Tears raced down her face. Mother and
daughter wept together. After several minutes, Valerie wiped at her own cheeks
with the flat of her palm. She dabbed at Minerva’s little face. Crimson smeared
over both of them.
“Oh, hell. Baby, I’m so sorry.” She picked
Minerva out of her high chair and held the crying toddler close. “Kid, I know
shit about being a parent.”
Nothing like this happened when her partners
were home.
Her husband John Janté had access to his own
mother, as well as the dizzying array of books written for humans. Her other
husband, Lance Soliel, the Angel of the Lost, had access to Divine Wisdom.
Valerie had two violent role models from the
1400s and no experience in caring for a child. She’d never given her blood,
tears, and sweat to create a new vampire. The responsibility had been too
great.
Lucifer’s teeth, she’d never even owned a
pet.
“Ah, darling.” She took a dropped butter
knife in her hand and stared into the shiny steel. No reflection stared back at
her. Instead, she ran her sharp thumbnail along the small scratches that marred
the surface. Metal curled away from her nail and dropped on the already trashed
floor.
Disgusted with herself, she flung the knife
away. It landed, hilt deep, in one of John’s Toulouse-Lautrec posters. A woman
who peered coyly over her petticoats now sported a knife handle in the middle
of her forehead.
A killing shot. Executed the way her father
had taught her.
“Kid, you drew a bad hand when your soul
chose me.”
Minerva’s eyes widened at the spectacle. “Good aim, Mom.” She sounded impressed.
The tension between Valerie’s eyebrows eased.
Her kid was easily distracted. Maybe she wouldn’t be ruined by her mom’s temper
tantrum.
The toddler reached her hand out toward the
knife in the wall. She grunted. Small lines appeared between her feathery, dark
eyebrows.
Valerie pressed her lips together, curious at
Minerva’s unusual vocalization and steady concentration. The baby chattered
like crazy in her parent’s head, but had not verbalized.
The knife pulled free from the wall. It
lifted in the air and spun like a tornado. The sunlight reflected off the metal,
throwing rainbows through the trashed room. With a swoosh, the knife flew.
Twaaaang.
The blade buried itself into a different
Lautrec poster, this of a singing woman in a snake-patterned dress. Right into
her open mouth.
“Whee!”
In a display of unusual coordination,
she clapped her little hands in the glee of a good shot.
Valerie’s tears dried in both pride and
despair. Her daughter was as dark as her mother. Lance’s angel blood did not
negate the Dracul urge for violence and power. John’s ability to guide Fallen
Angels toward their true calling did not wash away Minerva’s innate facility
for death.
What could Valerie do? Should she punish her
daughter, force her to bury this part of herself? Tell her that killing only
begat more killing? Destroy her before she grew into an unstoppable monster
like her mother and her uncle?
She took a deep breath. In the end, she said
the only truth she had. “Good aim, kid.”
Her beautiful daughter grinned, her fangs
bright and happy in her bloodstained face.
Perhaps they could both learn to control
their drive toward carnage.
“Here.” She tossed a fork in a gentle arc
toward Minerva. “Try again.”
Hours later, after her daughter slept and the
sun set behind the Alps, Valerie wrapped her
arms and legs around her husband John. He pressed the thick head of his penis
deeper inside her vagina. Her internal muscles quivered, trying to take him all
the way. The tanned skin around his green eyes narrowed as he grinned at her.
“Ahh, chou,”
he purred in her ear. “You take me so well.”
She thought of how barbaric she must look,
her black hair spread across the white linens of their bed, her mother’s heavy
gold and ruby necklace clasped around her neck. Rubies the size of pigeon eggs
decorated her ankles and chimed together as she urged him on. Her men liked the
look of her draped in the jewels she had carried over the years.
Preening a little, she teased him with the
draw of her nails across his bunched shoulders. She’d had her entire life to
dream of what kinds of sex she wanted. Her uninhibited partners had met every
idea she had thrown at them with genuine enthusiasm.
“Hell, yes,” he muttered, arching into her
touch. She scratched him harder, leaving red marks along his ribs.
A groan from the other side of the bedroom heightened
their excitement. John and Valerie turned their heads in unison to admire the
third person in the room. Their lover, Lance Soliel, struggled against the
twining black ropes that held him fast to a wooden chair.
The bondage outlined his muscular shoulders
and brick-hard belly. His thighs bunched and pressed against the chair’s seat.
Valerie could tell from the movements of his biceps that he struggled against
the knots holding his hands behind his back. She flickered her tongue at him
through her fangs.
His cock was flushed the same purple as his
face, setting his arctic ice-blue eyes aflame. His erection arched toward his
belly, and a pool of sweat and pre-ejaculate decorated his flat stomach.
Lastly, a black ring gag kept his mouth open,
leaving him only the use of his tongue.
Valerie’s slick pussy testified to Lance’s
oral skills. John had taken his turn demanding the wet devotion of Lance’s
tongue until the two of them could not resist the need to fuck.
Her dead heart could not swell or heat or
grow as humans’ organs did when they felt profound love. But she could trace
the warmth that flooded her bones and eased her self-disgust.
John tilted Valerie’s hips up so Lance could
get a good view, then penetrated between her flaring labia into the hot clasp
of her pussy.
John settled his cock deep inside of her.
Rolling his hips in figure eights, he reached for the vibrator on the side
table and flicked the switch.
Valerie pushed at him. The loss of
self-control frightened her.
“No, non.”
He wagged the long white handle like a father would wag a finger at a naughty
child. “I like this. I want this. Give it to me.”
She was no coward. She would face the fear of
her flashbacks. Valerie closed her eyes.
The vibrator ripped through the barriers of
her mind. With a cry like stone cracking, she orgasmed.
After the ropes were undone, after the
cuddling, the three fell asleep.
<2l>
John
Janté, Valerie’s beautiful Frenchman, leaned against a Cooper Mini, his dark
hair matted with gravel. His accelerated healing had already closed the cuts on
his face. His gasping breath broke the silence over the now trashed impound
yard.
Lance
Soliel, their lover, the recently ascended Angel of the Lost, floated in the
wet night air. His white feathers shook like knives, cleaning themselves of his
own battle. The mind-controlled Fallen Angels were set free.
Mina’s
eyes opened. She held out her broken arms. The sweet and musky blood brought
saliva to the vampire’s mouth.
“Come
to me, my husband,” the corpse crooned, gesturing to Valerie. “Won’t you
embrace me as you once did?”
Valerie
took the body in her arms and made love to the memory of a lie.
She woke with the taste of old rotten blood
in her mouth.
Without disturbing her men, she slinked out
the open window.
The disgusting images never stopped. Valerie
wanted to dig her eyes out, throw herself on a stake, even beg Lucifer for the
ability to forget. She ran faster, pushing the edges of her speed. She sucked
in air.
Valerie might have been transformed from a
vampire to something unheard of, but oxygen was still an intoxicant. Vampires
on oxygen were known to lose control of their judgment. As if she had taken a
shot of cocaine directly to her brainstem, her nerves screamed, as raw as
though they had been sandpapered. Her eyes bulged.
At three in the morning, Lake
Geneva transformed from a deep, cold blue into luscious purples
and greens. The urban glow of the city spread like a lighthouse over the water
and shed illumination upon the nearly vertical mountains. The bucolic glory of
central Europe never failed to inspire awe in
any beholder.
The boulders and lichen of the tree line gave
way to the edge of the snowpack. Her bare feet made no indentation on the fresh
powder.
Valerie wanted to forget. She would erase the
memory of Mina’s dying face. But it was acid-etched into the bottomless depths
of her sick mind. She flowed across the rooftops of downtown, the colored
lights sending aurora-like colors across the water. She jumped from building to
building, landing with light feet that never stumbled. Valerie’s undead muscles
didn’t burn from the exertion; after all, that required a metabolism. Her body
went numb from the brutal pace. Grief gripped her throat as tightly as a barbwire
noose. The nausea did not abate.
Valerie shook with unleashed horror that did
not let her sleep.
